



Copyright^' 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 



UNION LABOR IN PEACE 
AND WAR 



WALTER V. WOEHLKE 



San Francisco 
Sunset Publishing House 



"2* a>7 



Copyright 1917, 1918 
Sunset Magazine, Inc. 

Copyright 1918 
Sunset Publishing House 



SEP 31 

©CU5Utf677 



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CONTENTS 

Chapter I. Why the Pacific Coast Became the Union 

Paradise I 

Chapter II. The Boycott and Its Abuses 15 

Chapter III. Who Killed Cock Robin ? 27 

Chapter IV. What Can Your Boy Do? 39 

Chapter V. The Unions' Family Feuds 46 

Chapter VI. The Unions' Mailed Fist 57 

Chapter VII. The Striker and Low Justice 66 

Chapter VIII. The Unions and Democracy 76 

Chapter IX. Bolsheviki of the West 86 

Chapter X. Slackers in the Western Shipyards 96 

Chapter XI. Wages and Output 105 

Chapter XII. Labor Monopolies and Their Results 114 

Chapter XIII. The Problem of the I. W. W 125 

Chapter XIV. The Square Deal Pays 134 



FOREWORD 

THE next time you ride home on the car between five-thirty 
and six, look at the man with the dinner pail across the 
aisle. His finger nails are not manicured; there are no 
kid gloves on his hands, his clothing is stained with black oil spots 
and the odor of perspiration betrays the lack of a shower bath. 
The young person with the imitation seal scarf and the salary of 
nine a week tries to avoid contact with him, but aside from her 
penciled and lifted brow he attracts no special attention. 

Why should he? His nose, even though it has a black smudge 
that was not removed by the hasty ablution, is in the middle of 
his face. He breathes, moves his hands, feet and jaw just like 
other people, reads his paper, discusses prohibition, the movies, 
baseball and politics just like you and I. He is made of the same 
clay, has the same skin, the same elemental hopes, joys, fears, 
the same bald spot and the same kind of corns as the rest of us. 
Change his clothes, put him into the hands of a competent 
barber, and in half an hour you could not tell him apart in a group 
of our leading citizens. 

Yet the man with the dinner pail is a Problem, the biggest 
problem before us. Multiply him a few million times and he 
becomes Labor. His stature grows into the sky, his rather com- 
monplace face changes expression, assumes a threatening mien, his 
relaxed hands contract into gigantic iron fists. As a plain person 
riding home in a crowded street car between a shop girl and hard- 
ware clerk the man with the dinner pail asks for and receives no 
special treatment; he pays his nickel, takes his transfer, gives up 
his seat to the woman with the baby and hangs by the strap like 
any other citizen. But when he becomes a Problem, when he 
drops his individual capacity and turns into Labor, especially 
Organized Labor, he loses the aspect of an ordinary citizen. 

The change that takes place is analogous to the transformation 
of the civilian into the soldier. As member of a military force 
the individual exercises rights and privileges which, performed 
by a private citizen, would promptly get him into jail. When he 
dons the uniform and takes the oath, the soldier's status is com- 
pletely changed. He is removed from the control of the civil 
authorities; his doings are judged by a special code; his freedom 
of action is limited; his standard of conduct is radically altered. 

A somewhat similar change takes place when the individual 
ceases to be just a plain worker and, by a process of agglutination, 
turns into Organized Labor. As a component part of Organized 
Labor, he claims rights and privileges which he would not 



vi Foreword 

d im of receiving as a common, garden-variety citizen. If he 
e s dinner in a restaurant, finds hair in the soup, his steak tough, 
tiis coffee bitter and the bill high he does not rush out, print 
handbills, paint signs and hire men to keep people from patron- 
izing the place; if he, in his private capacity as an unadorned 
citizen, has a quarrel with his grocer or butcher because they will 
not knock five dollars off the monthly bill, he does not endeavor 
to induce all the patrons of the tradesmen to take their custom 
elsewhere, nor does he publish lists of the offending merchants 
in his paper. But as a member of Organized Labor he considers 
the boycott his own peculiar privilege, fights vociferously 
against its surrender and complains loudly when it is turned 
against him. 

The merchant who sees his livelihood and his capital take wings 
because his competitor undersells him, never dreams of hiring 
pickets to patrol the sidewalk in front of his rival's store, yet 
Organized Labor claims this extraordinary privilege. Our friend 
across the aisle would never think of waylaying his neighbor who 
pays five dollars a month less rent for similar accommodations; 
it does not occur to him to break his neighbor's ribs, his land- 
lord's head or to burn the offending premises. Such acts would 
constitute a common black crime like burglary or embezzlement. 
But when these identical acts are committed in the cause of 
Organized Labor, their character suddenly changes, they become 
chameleons, turn pure white and, in the opinion of our friend, are 
wholly justifiable and a righteous punishment for the wicked. 

Of course there is a reason for the colored glasses our friend 
with the dinner pail wears in his collective capacity, glasses 
that give him a distorted picture of his relations to his fellow- 
men. That reason is the balance of power. Just as Belgium 
was given a certain extraordinary status in the family of nations, 
a status based upon the country's inability to protect itself 
against its powerful neighbors, so Labor has been given by com- 
mon consent a privileged position. Because Labor was weak, 
because the industrial revolution brought about through the 
introduction of power-driven machinery left the individual 
worker helpless in the hand of the employer, society intervened, 
placed an increasing number of restrictions upon the employer's 
liberty of action and at the same time released Labor from the 
necessity of obeying certain statutes which continued to be in 
force as against all other elements of the population. To put it 
tersely, society in its own interest shackled the employer with 
numerous special laws while at the same time it untied the hands 
of Labor. 

Right at this point let us remark that, had society failed to act 
on behalf of Labor as it did, anarchy, chaos, turmoil and bloody 



Foreword .i 

strife would have been the result. The special position was 
corded Labor not because the individual workman was intrins, - 
ally better entitled to it than the rest of humanity, but becaustri 
the bitter necessities of the moment made the action imperative 
and inevitable if society was to continue to exist. 

But society, in extending a helping hand to Labor, in extending 
extraordinary rights and privileges to one element, overlooked 
something. It forgot to state that, in return for the extraordinary 
privileges, Labor should and must balance the account by assum- 
ing certain duties. The bargain was one-sided. Labor took and 
took, but Labor gave nothing in return for the protection it 
received. Labor gradually arrived at a state of mind in which it 
believed that it — Labor, especially Organized Labor — actually 
was society, that no other element counted, that the collective 
manual workers had a God-given right to further their group 
interest in any way they pleased, regardless of the welfare of 
society as a whole. 

The best example of the result of this mental attitude is sup- 
plied by recent events in Russia. 

In Russia the man who works with his hands, carrying the 
policy of Organized Labor everywhere to its logical conclusion, 
has proclaimed himself dictator. In Russia the reddist dream 
of the reddest radical has become reality. For a year the workers 
have had exclusive control not only of the political government 
and of the army, but of all industrial processes as well. And all 
the world knows by this time the results of pure and unadulter- 
ated working class control. The theoretical paradise of Karl 
Marx, Proudhomme and Kropotkin in actual practice turned out 
to be a sample of red-hot hell. 

What will happen in the rest of Europe and in America when 
the war ceases, when the external pressure is relieved, when the 
temperature goes down and thirty million men suddenly are 
thrown back upon their own resources? 

Thirty million men and their dependents, equivalent to the 
total population of the United States, are now being fed, clothed 
and housed by the belligerent governments. Who can imagine 
the tremendous upheaval resulting from the sudden unemploy- 
ment of almost the entire working population of the United 
States? England by no means has the largest army, yet England 
is planning to distribute the process of demobilization over 
twelve months at least in order to forestall chaos and misery. 
The problem of merely getting the boys out of the trenches and 
back to the benches is daily assuming larger proportions. 

And what will Labor do once the fighting is over? 

In every belligerent nation the gigantic pressure of war has 
speeded up the machines, smashed union shop rules, pushed 



viii Foreword 

aside all limitations on output. In every belligerent country 
female and unskilled labor in wholesale quantities has displaced 
the skilled mechanic And in every belligerent country scarcity 
of men has lifted wages to heights unknown before the war. 

Perhaps the well paid woman worker, perhaps the newly 
trained, highly paid laborer will gladly step aside, hand the re- 
turning soldier-mechanic his old job without a struggle; it is 
possible that the returning veterans, glad to escape the danger 
and misery of the trenches, will not object strongly to the new 
regime of higher speed and longer hours. No trouble may arise 
out of these conditions, but the fixed peculiarities of human 
nature are bound to make a great deal of trouble the moment a 
wholesale reduction of the high war wages is attempted. Yet 
such a reduction must come. International competition, now 
non-existent, and unprecedented taxation will compel it. 

When it comes, what will Labor do? 

Nobody knows, least of all Labor itself. Yet the problem of 
Labor after the war is everywhere receiving deep and anxious 
thought. Labor has learned to handle dynamite, to eat, sleep, 
kill and die with it; Labor now knows the feel of its military as 
well as its economic power. After the war there may — or there 
may not — be a series of great internal disturbances similar to 
the Russian upheaval in every belligerent country. 

For years to come the Labor problem will be the biggest, the 
most important question confronting the United States. 

To contribute its mite towards the solution of this problem, 
the author undertakes in this volume to analyze and define the 
status of both union and unorganized workers on the Pacific 
Coast. For a study of this subject the Pacific Coast provides an 
extraordinary wealth of material. It was on the Pacific Coast 
that the trade unions won their first political victories in the 
United States; on the Pacific Slope are the only communities in 
which the craft unions had or have complete control over the 
machinery of government; on the Pacific Coast the closed-shop 
doctrine has won its most thoroughgoing victories, and on the 
Pacific Coast this doctrine has suffered its bitterest defeat. 
Though the highest wages in the world are paid in the Far West, 
it has been the scene of perhaps the bloodiest labor struggles in 
the country, and the problem of the drifting, itinerant worker 
here is more acute than in the rest of the country. 

If this little book succeeds in widening the reader's horizon, 
if it gives him a clearer, sharper picture of the facts underlying 
the Labor situation, if it helps him to formulate his own judgment 
as to the merits of the great controversy, if it should advance 
the problem by one inch on the road to ultimate solution, its 
aims and objects will have been fulfilled. 



CHAPTER I 

WHY THE PACIFIC COAST BECAME THE 
UNION PARADISE 

In September, 1916, four labor organizations with a member- 
ship less than the population of one Congressional district 
cracked the whip, lifted the hoop and began counting: 

"One, two, thr— " 

Before the count was finished, Congress leaped through the 
hoop. 

It was an historical moment when, in obedience to an ulti- 
matum with a time limit attached, the representatives of one 
hundred million people hastened to pass a law raising the wages 
of two hundred thousand men, already the highest paid group of 
workers in the world, without investigation or deliberation, 
threats speeding up the legislative machinery as no bonus ever 
speeded lathe or punch. 

When I read of the panicky fear that wrung a chorus of reluc- 
tant ayes out of Congress the picture of a brakeman came back 
to me. He was sitting in the shade of a date palm down in the 
Colorado Desert, pulling on his pipe and resting while waiting 
for Number Nine to pass. 

"Ran her up to a hundred and forty-seven bucks last month, " 
he volunteered by-and-by. "'Tain't so worse, I say. Helluvalot 
better 'n stacking alfalfa all day for two 'n a quarter. Me quit 
railroadin' ? What for? Best I ever did on the outside was eighty 
a month, an' I'd be lucky to get that if I'd quit braking now/' 

There are millions of men with better education, with superior 
skill, men equally intelligent, equally willing and ambitious 
whose pay envelopes will never reach the opulence of the brake- 
man's check. What magic elixir lifted the earnings of this man 
from eighty on the outside to an average of a hundred and thirty 
on the inside of the railroad ? 

Organization; collective bargaining; labor monopoly; the trade 
union. 

Organizations of workingmen reach far back into antiquity. 
It is recorded that the union of image-makers in ancient Rome 
strenuously opposed the introduction of Christianity because the 
spread of the new religion restricted the market of the artisan's 
product. When the feudal system went to pieces, the craft 
guilds arose and flourished even in America, where the "shoo- 
makers of Boston" organized the first guild in 1648, its charter 
significantly denying this organization the power of "inhancing 



2 Union Labor in Peace and War 

the prices of shooes, bootes or wages." In these craft guilds the 
journeyman owned the meager, inexpensive tools of his trade 
and, through skill, industry, thrift or the employer's daughter it 
was easy for him to climb into the masters' ranks. The modern 
trade union did not come into being until the steam engine was 
hitched to gigantic machines and made the craftsman's hand 
tools worthless. 

It is difficult in the twentieth century to realize the full extent 
of the upheaval brought about through the introduction of 
machine production in a handicraft age. The entire industrial 
world was thrown out of joint. Flourishing manufacturers by 
the score went to the wall because an upstart in the business 
with the aid of steam and a new machine was suddenly able to 
produce the goods at one-third of the cost. Wages of hand work 
were slashed to the bone to meet the machine competition. And 
the multiplication of the power-driven machines brought about 
unbridled competition among the owners of the increasing 
factories, forcing them to cut wages, to increase hours, to employ 
women and children in order to survive. Unrestricted, un- 
regulated competition among both workers and employers, a 
condition which, strange to say, seemed ideal to many Americans 
a little while ago, brought about one of the blackest periods in 
modern history. 

In Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Lancashire the English 
weavers were actually starving a century ago. The power- 
driven spinning frame had robbed thousands of the hand workers 
of their livelihood and the business depression caused by the 
Napoleonic wars had shut down mill after mill. Blaming the 
new machinery for their distress, the workers went around and 
smashed the hated frames; nor did the destruction cease until 
more than a score of the rioters, under the provisions of a special 
law, had been hung by their scrawny necks, until they were dead. 

In this dark period of unorganized chaos men and women 
often worked sixteen hours out of the twenty-four; children 
four and five years old were forced to labor ten hours a day and 
longer. And this condition was not confined to the Old World. 
The Boston workmen in 1835 struck against the labor period 
stretching from dawn until dawn. In New England seventy 
years ago women and children worked thirteen to fourteen hours 
a day, lived in hovels owned by the company, ate the food sold 
in company stores or boarding houses and even went to church 
in edifices company-owned. 

In these days when Congress humbly carries out the mandate 
of labor leaders it is even more difficult to imagine a period in 
which the laborer could not move out of his district without 
official permission, in which all political power was reserved 



The Union Paradise 3 

exclusively for the privileged classes. The English artisans did 
not obtain the ballot until 1867. In Germany universal manhood 
suffrage came into being in 1871, but the English agricultural 
laborer had to wait fourteen years longer — till 1885 — before he 
was admitted into the voting booth. Lest we militant democrats 
preen ourselves too arrogantly, it should be added that the work- 
man in America did not begin to vote in the Northern states 
until 1830. Before that time he was in the same position officially 
and legally that the negro laborer of the South occupies unoffi- 
cially today. 

Verily, labor has climbed to the top of the heap with giant's 
strides in the last eighty years! 

The Sherman Anti-Trust law is still in full force and effect; 
the common law provision against conspiracies in restraint of 
trade, dating from the time of Edward I, is still binding upon 
industry and trade, but labor has been expressly relieved from 
the necessity of observing either. In the discussion of labor's 
position, of labor's demands and methods, it is important to 
remember these exemptions, to realize that society has the right 
to demand a return for the extraordinary privileges it has be- 
stowed upon labor organizations. 

In the United States the growth and development of labor 
unions has been continuous for more than a hundred years, but 
this development differed in many important features from 
similar movements in Europe and Australia. Perhaps the princi- 
pal distinguishing feature of the American movement is the 
tendency to create an "aristocracy of labor," to widen the gulf 
between the mass of unskilled and unorganized workers on the 
one hand and the comparatively small number of skilled and 
thoroughly organized mechanics on the other hand. The best 
example of this internal class division is provided by the railroad 
workers. The skilled and organized train men enjoy a compensa- 
tion ranging from $100 to #250 a month while the section "hands" 
have to be satisfied with pay ranging from #40 to $60. The 
unionized bricklayer of the United States earns $6 in eight hours; 
the laborer who mixes the bricklayer's mortar worked nine hours 
and earned only two dollars. No such class stratification within 
the ranks of labor has taken place in Europe. The English 
bricklayer and the building laborer work the same number of 
hours and their compensation is not very far apart; if the brick- 
layer's wage is, say, thirty cents an hour, the laborer's will be 
fifteen cents or perhaps even a little more. 

Immigration has been the cause of this growth of a class within 
a class. The newest race of immigrants was ever willing to per- 
form the hardest tasks for the lowest pay. They "scabbed" on 
the earlier arrivals. Men from northern Europe underbid the 



4 Union Labor in Peace and War 

native worker until they were Americanized. Slavs underbid 
the Germans, the Irish and the Scandinavians. The Slavs, in 
turn, found the Jews elbowing their way into their jobs, and now 
the Jew, in the clothing trade for instance, is yielding before the 
Italians. 

Furthermore, there was open to the American labor leader an 
avenue for the improvement of his position practically unknown 
in Europe. Through his actual or imaginary control of large 
blocks of vote the American union general was — and is — con- 
stantly tempted to go into politics, to abandon the meager 
legitimate rewards growing out of the field of organized labor 
and to climb after the large, juicy plums dangling invitingly 
in the foliage of city, state or national politics. 

For more than twenty years after the discovery of gold Cali- 
fornia had no labor "problem" in the present sense of the term. 
Owing to the isolation of the Pacific Coast and the resultant 
heavy cost of importing both goods and labor, the employer and 
his workers had things their own way. The country was rich, 
growing like a mushroom, money was abundant and competition 
was practically non-existent. If the workmen demanded an 
addition to their already high wages, the manufacturer or the 
contractor granted it readily and passed the cost on to his cus- 
tomers. For decades after the beginning of labor unions on the 
Pacific Coast their relations with the employers were free of the 
bitter antagonism that causes the two factions to glare at one 
another with suspicion and hatred today. Only once in a while, 
when the demands of the unions became exorbitant, did the 
employers fight to a finish. 

A notable example of such an exorbitant demand is the strike 
in San Francisco of the bakers' union in 1863. The organized 
bakery workers decided that it was time for another raise. They 
knew that the master bakers were helpless. It would take months 
and cost enormous sums to import new workers by stage-coach 
or by way of Panama and in the meantime the city had to have 
bread. So they demanded an increase of #35 a month and 
struck. They got the money, but the master bakers gritted 
their teeth and stuck their heads together. Six months later a 
few score German bakers arrived from Hamburg. Bakery 
wages immediately did some fancy ground and lofty tumbling. 

While the blue smoke from the campfires of the gold-seekers 
was still rising above the plains, unions of printers, carpenters and 
other trades were organized in San Francisco and Sacramento. 
Their demands encountered little opposition. In the early days 
everybody worked with his hands, everybody hoped to be rich 
day after tomorrow, everybody gladly recognized labor's right 
to good pay. When labor in 1853 demanded the ten-hour day, 



The Union PaIiadise 



5 



the California legislature passed the law almost without opposi- 
tion. As early as 1867 the building trades of San Francisco 
obtained the eight-hour day. The first free employment bureau 
anywhere in the United States was opened in San Francisco in 
1868. When a new state constitution was hammered out in 




Denis Kearney, first of the labor agitators on the Pacific Coast, and 
foe of the Chinese 



1879, one-third of the builders were delegates elected by the 
Workingmen's Party. As soon as labor demanded the exclusion 
of the Chinese, the public rallied to its support. The worker's 
right to organize, to demand ample pay, reasonable hours and 
good working conditions was conceded. 



6 Union Labctr in Peace and War 

So it came about that the Pacific Coast, more especially Cali- 
fornia and San Francisco, became the focal point of the American 
trade union movement, the locality in which organized labor 
reached the zenith of power, wealth and influence. But the 
typical employers' association of the Pacific Coast resembled a 
shrapnel shell; in the very act of downing its opponent it resolved 
itself into its original fragments and disappeared. 

The Union Pacific was completed in 1869. Thousands of men 
employed in its building streamed into San Francisco; other 
thousands came from the East and with them came trainload 
after trainload of Eastern commodities manufactured by men 
receiving far less than the standard California wages. In addition 
the Nevada mines began to decrease their output and, when silver 
was demonetized, the financial structure of the Far West swayed 
in the furious blast. San Francisco was overrun with hordes of 
unemployed men, many of them hungry. But they did not lay 
the chief blame for their hunger, for the decreasing wages and 
increasing hours on the employers. They turned the vials of 
their wrath on the Chinese instead, listened to the first of the 
outstanding labor leaders, Dennis Kearney, while he denounced 
coolie labor on the sand lots, and their distress prompted Henry 
George, then in San Francisco, to seek the solution of all social 
ills in the abolition of private ownership of land. In their 
agitation against coolie labor, against land monopoly, against 
corruption in public life, against the domination of politics by 
public-service corporations, they had the sympathy and support 
of the public, of the majority of employers. 

In the decade between 1880 and 1890 the Chinese were ex- 
cluded, business conditions improved, Andrew Furuseth founded 
the Coast Seamen's Union that was to make him famous, and 
organized labor in California took hold of a new weapon, the use 
and abuse of which was to have far-reaching consequences. 

That new weapon was the boycott. Aggravated by the sym- 
pathetic strike, it so irritated the employers, inflicted upon them 
so much unnecessary loss, that they combined and inflicted upon 
the unions a crushing defeat. The introduction of the boycott 
ushered in the era of violence, dynamiting, of "class conscious- 
ness" and direct action still in crimson bloom. 

The boycott is a method of punishment. What is more natural 
than the act of a union which forbids its members to purchase the 
product of, say, a cigar manufacturer who will not accede to the 
"closed shop"? What is more natural than the act of a union 
which, to inflict greater loss, to bring greater pressure to bear 
upon a stubborn employer, asks that all other unions likewise 
penalize members who buy this employer's goods? And from this 
extension of the pressure it is an easy and logical step to appeal to 



The Union Paradise 7 

the general public for aid and sympathy, to proclaim the mis- 
deeds of the offending employer on handbills, posters, transpar- 
encies, to post in front of his establishment pickets charged with 
the duty of shooing trade away from the "Unfair" house. 

To Pacific Coast residents the boycott seems as natural, as 
inevitable and commonplace a phenomenon as freckles on a boy's 
nose. Most of us are so familiar with its manifestations that we 
no longer notice the posters, pickets and handbills. Yet I 
believe most of us would open our eyes very wide, would stop, 
look and listen intently if the retailers' association of Portland, 
Los Angeles, Seattle and San Francisco should throw picket 
lines across the entrance of Meier & Frank's department store, 
warn pedestrians against patronizing Bullock's or the Emporium 
and have sandwich men parade in front of the Bon Marche urging 
the public to stay out of the store because it was "unfair to the 
organized retailers." We did not become very indignant when 
the union of retail clerks during a wage controversy endeavored 
to bankrupt the chain of Owl drug stores along the Pacific Coast. 
Suppose the competitors of the Owl stores used the same tactics 
as the striking employees; suppose every group of merchants hurt 
by the lower sale prices of another group should employ pickets, 
handbills, posters and sandwich men in an effort to destroy the 
business of their competitors. The result would be incessant 
strife and chaos, a complete disorganization of the orderly pro- 
cesses of production and distribution. 

In the beginning the Pacific Coast unions had used the boycott 
to discourage the use of Chinese-made goods by organized labor 
and its friends. It was the fight of California's trade unions 
against oriental labor that gave birth to the union label when the 
few remaining white cigar-makers in the sixties placed a white 
poster on every box of their product to distinguish it from the 
"yellow" output. The union label was effective. So was the 
boycott. So effective was the boycott that it seemed a shame 
not to use this weapon against neutrals to make them fall in 
line against the enemy. And so arose the secondary boycott, the 
classic example of which is to be found in the trade-union block- 
ade of a certain Vancouver Island colliery in 1891. 

The miners of this colliery, having struck for shorter hours and 
against the company-store graft, appealed to the Federal Trades 
Council in San Francisco for help. It was given willingly. The 
Council at once declared a boycott against the "unfair" coal and 
appointed a committee to see that the consumption of this fuel 
in California was reduced. The job was done thoroughly. Pur- 
chasers of the "unfair" coal all over California were spotted, 
bombarded with pleas, demands and threats. If they did not 
yield, if they persisted in buying the boycotted product, they in 



8 Union Labor in Peace and War 

turn were placed under the ban, loyal union men were com- 
manded, the general public was exhorted, not to patronize the 
"unfair" establishment. Thus one primary boycott might, like 
a redwood tree with its circle of scions, surround itself with a 
dozen offshoots. In the case of the "unfair" British Columbia 
coal the striking miners settled their differences with the colliery 
late in the year, but the boycotts in California continued merrily 
for months after the original bone of contention had been buried. 

Unfortunately, the boycott, like the proprietary nostrum, 
cured nothing. An overdose of the boycott medicine merely 
aggravated functional disorders. It irritated the employers, 
scared the merchants, produced a feeling of uneasiness through- 
out the commercial community. Nobody knew when and where 
the next boycott blow was to fall; no one felt secure in signing a 
contract for supplies, raw material or merchandise. 

In 1891 the boycott mania aroused the employers to action. 
They organized the Board of Manufacturers and Employers of 
California, the first central association of its kind on the Pacific 
Coast, raised a fund and tossed their collective sombrero into the 
ring. The excessive use of the boycott had driven them into the 
trenches, a fact shown plainly in the "Manifesto on the Boycott" 
issued by the organization. 

"The manufacturers do not complain of wages," says the 
Manifesto. "... If permitted to do business in peace the 
manufacturers could pay these wages and prosper. It is the ele- 
ment of uncertainty that kills. . . . The boycott is the cry- 
ing evil of our times. . . . A boy cotter is in all respects an 
industrial wrecker. He is a highwayman. His single and simple 
proposition is, 'stand and deliver.' " 

The employers' association did not question the right of the 
workers to organize and to obtain the best possible terms through 
collective bargaining; neither did the association endeavor to bar 
union members from employment, but it did insist that the arbi- 
trary action of the labor leaders, the declaration of the boycott on 
flimsy pretexts, the calling of strikes upon the slightest provoca- 
tion, must be stopped. On these issues the employers went to war. 

The Coast Seamen's Union, organized by Andrew Furuseth 
in 1885, was decisively beaten when the united employers backed 
the Ship Owners' Association in 1893. Hard times came to the 
aid of the employers. Labor was a drug on the market and its 
organizations went to pieces under the stress of internal com- 
petition. By 1895 only one union, the printers, maintained the 
union shop intact in San Francisco. All the rest had in a single 
onslaught lost the control over their trades they had exercised for 
almost fifty years. Whereupon the employers promptly allowed 
their organization to go to pieces. 



The Union Paradise 9 

The beginning of the prolonged irrigation boom in 1898, 
assisted by the acquisition of the Philippines and the gold rush 
to Alaska, brought good times and super-abundant employment 
back with a rush. Money was plentiful and circulated freely up 
and down the Coast and, with the red ink entries off the balance 
sheet, the employers did not seriously oppose either the reorgan- 
ization or the granting of the unions' demands. They harbored 
no animosity toward organized labor. Even the Coast Seamen's 
Journal, owned, edited and read by labor, acknowledged that the 
employers were ready to share their prosperity with the workers, 
that they readily granted the demands and adopted the union 
scale and union conditions if the union controlled all the shops in 
a trade. 

In 1899 twenty-five new unions were organized in San Fran- 
cisco. In the first half of 1900 ten more were added. The head- 
quarters of the Labor Council swarmed like a beehive on a warm 
May morning. Hitherto unionism had been confined to the 
skilled trades. Now the ambitions of the leaders soared higher. 
They organized everybody from bootblacks to pin setters and 
grave diggers. Organization and control of every worker in 
San Francisco, in California, in all the Far West was their aim. 
At first they had been satisfied with shorter hours and higher 
wages; now they endeavored to wrest all control over working 
conditions out of the hands of the employer and place it in the 
keeping of the "shop steward" appointed by the union. 

"The one motto of all seemed to be 'Organize, demand, 
strike!' ' This is not the statement of an employer. It was 
printed in the official paper of the unions, "Organized Labor," 
and it appeared in an editorial warning the union forces against 
the indiscriminate chartering of unskilled occupations, counsel- 
ing moderation and preaching against the endless succession of 
strikes. The situation became so bad that the well established 
unions, scenting danger, proposed to the Labor Council a new 
rule prohibiting any union from calling a strike until it had been 
chartered and had obtained membership in the Council for at 
least six months. But the voices of the prophets were not heeded. 
The work of organizing, demanding, striking and boycotting went 
on undiminished in volume. A complete monopoly of all labor in 
San Francisco was in sight when at last the merchants became 
scared. 

Catching the fever, the porters and packers employed in the 
wholesale and retail establishments formed a union. It was the 
last link in the chain of workers handling the goods on their way 
from the producer to the consumer, and this last link was right 
in the stores of the merchants. The stevedores and longshore- 
men, the freight handlers and the teamsters, were all thoroughly 



io Union Labor in Peace and War 

organized. If the porters and packers joined them in the Water- 
front Federation, a two-by-four disturbance in Seattle through 
the sympathetic strike might disorganize every mercantile 
establishment in San Francisco. And the prospect of having 
"shop stewards" dictate the policy of their stores frightened the 
merchants. 

Industrial conditions in San Francisco were as harmonious and 
pleasant for the employers as a woolen shirt next to the skin on a 
hot day; strikes primary and sympathetic followed one another 
like bills on the first of the month; boycotts were declared with as 
little regard for consequences as Coal Oil Johnny had for money, 
yet the employers offered no serious resistance, did nothing to 
check the impending labor monopoly until the frightened mer- 
chants brought on the teamsters' strike in order to forestall the 
unionization of the porters and packers. 

In July, 1901, the refusal of a few teamsters to handle "unfair" 
baggage gave the signal for the contest. On July 30th more than 
twenty thousand members of fourteen unions engaged in the 
handling and transportation of commodities struck. Civil war 
broke out as soon as the employers endeavored to have their 
hauling done by imported non-union men. In their headquarters 
the Brotherhood of Teamsters maintained a private jail where it 
locked up the "scabs" pulled from the wagons. Hundreds of 
strikebreakers were assaulted and brutally beaten; many of 
them were crippled by blows with an iron bar that broke their 
wrists. Fear reigned in the city; fear of death, bodily injury and 
business losses caused the executive committee of the Employers' 
Association in charge of the strike to keep the identity of its 
members a profound secret, and this secrecy born of fear in turn 
prevented open discussion and negotiations. Though the 
business of half the state was disrupted, though scores of 
individuals and firms were ruined, though farm crops spoiled, 
factories were silent and stores could not obtain goods, though 
Mayor Phelan and Governor Gage urged mediation, the Em- 
ployers' Association declined to negotiate and the bloodshed 
went on. 

It is now recognized that the unyielding refusal of the Employ- 
ers' Association to arbitrate was a mistake, yet this mistake arose 
primarily out of the actions of the labor leaders who endeavored 
to bring about an air-tight labor monopoly, whose arbitrary 
policies aroused the bitter antagonism of the employers, whose 
toleration of violence and assault caused the hair to bristle on 
their opponents' neck. 

In October the teamsters returned to work, beaten. The non- 
union men hired during the strike retained their places. Long 
before this the porters and packers, their new organization dis- 



The Union Paradise 



ii 



persed, had abandoned the strike. At a tremendous cost the 
complete union monopoly of the freight-handling business had 
been forestalled, but unionism as such had not been vitally in- 
jured. On the contrary, in the succeeding years it became more 
bitterly, more ruthlessly aggressive than ever before — and it 
went into politics. 



^i^^^^w 


mSr H W^' 


■py :< mm ^m 



Eugene Schmitz, the orchestra leader who became San Francisco's 
first union labor mayor 

During the strike the unions protested vociferously against the 
efforts of the police to maintain the peace on the public streets; 
they objected most strongly against the arming of merchantmen 
passing through the danger zone, maintaining that it was not the 
business of the police to convoy "scab" teams or to sit on guard 
alongside of strikebreakers hauling goods to and from the docks. 
It is not quite clear just why the union leaders objected to police 
protection for men not members of their organization, but object 
they did. And when the police officers during the frequent riots 



12 Union Labor in Peace and War 

caused by attacks upon non-union teamsters actually used their 
clubs, actually swung them and brought them down on the heads 
of good union men engaged in the pastime of beating up a mere 
"scab," why, the righteous indignation of the unions knew no 
bounds. They determined that in future the police must learn 
to discriminate carefully between union and non-union heads. 
So they went into politics. Abe Ruef, an obscure lawyer and 
ward politician, brought out Eugene Schmitz as the Union Labor 
Party candidate for mayor. Schmitz was a German-Irish- 
American union musician with an imposing presence and genial 
manner. On the wave of union resentment he was, greatly to his 
own astonishment, elected mayor of San Francisco by 21,000 
votes out of 53,000 ballots. Abe Ruef, the sponsor of Schmitz 
and undisputed boss of the victorious party, immediately pro- 
ceeded to rent more safety-deposit vaults. 

Schmitz was reelected in 1903. Rumors of graft began floating 
around and boodling was openly charged in the 1905 campaign. 
Unfortunately organized labor and its sympathizers as usual 
believed its leaders when they declared that these graft charges 
were the result of a "capitalist conspiracy" designed to rob the 
laboring man and his honest representatives of their power. 
Together with the machinations of self-seeking politicians this 
attitude of the union men resulted in the election not only of 
Schmitz but of the entire Union Labor ticket. Organized labor 
at last was on top. It had both economic and political control 
over San Francisco. Its goal was achieved. 

It is not necessary to dwell on the horrible mess the Union 
Labor party made of the job. The results startled the country. 
Instead of raking through the ashes of the old graft scandal, let 
us survey the results of labor union activities on the Pacific Coast. 

It is the unanimous testimony of historians and investigators 
that the efforts of labor to improve its standing through organi- 
zation and collective bargaining encountered less opposition in 
the Far West than anywhere else in the country. Likewise it is 
an undisputed fact that the necessity for organization was smaller 
west of the Rockies than in any other part of the nation. The ex- 
ploitation of women and children never was a problem on the Pacific 
Coast; sweatshops did not exist; even in the unorganized trades 
and occupations wages always were higher, hours shorter than 
elsewhere. Nor did the unions have to fight for the right to 
organize. From the very beginning the Pacific Coast employers 
never questioned this right; for fifty years and more there was 
scarcely one employer who refused to deal with the representa- 
tives of the union, who insisted upon his undoubted privilege to 
determine conditions of work, hours and wages with each in- 
dividual employee. 



The Union Paradise 13 

And public sentiment was ever on the side of labor, from the 
day when the California legislature more than sixty years ago 
fixed ten hours as the maximum workday, through the Chinese 
exclusion agitation to the present century, when the San Francisco 
public, having faith in the claim of the labor leaders that the labor 
administration was honest, that the charges of graft were a 
calumny manufactured by the capitalists to discredit the unions, 
reelected Schmitz and the gang of unscrupulous grafters. Every 
factor was in favor of the unions, yet what did they accomplish 
in this most favorable environment? 

Guided wisely by farsighted leaders, blinded neither by the 
glare of sudden success nor goaded into reckless fury, the precious 
assets that were the birthright of the trade-union movement in 
the Far West might have been conserved and increased; confi- 
dence and good-will between employers and employees might 
have been maintained and augmented, both sides and the public 
benefiting thereby. The voice of organized labor might ring 
more loudly through the halls of Far Western legislatures than 
it did forty or fifty years ago, might be a direct and most potent 
factor in shaping legislation. The sympathy of the public for the 
cause of organized labor might have been enhanced, might have 
become the deciding factor in the settlement of industrial dis- 
putes. 

All these most desirable ends were possible of accomplishment. 
Organized labor had no organized opposition. Consistently for 
sixty years it had the upper hand. Did the men at the helm steer 
a course leading toward peace, good-will and mutual confidence? 
Did they preserve and increase public sympathy? Did they 
endeavor to be guided by the beacon light of the common good 
or did they, placing temporary, evanescent advantages and crude 
class interest above the welfare of the whole, hurt the cause of the 
man who labors with his hands? To put it tersely, does the record 
show that the effort of fifty years has improved the position and 
the esteem of the trade unions in the Far West? 

In the fall of 1916 a manufacturer in the state of Washington, a 
man known for years as the best friend of the labor unions in his 
line, suddenly changed his allegiance and announced himself a 
candidate for the nomination for the governorship. His campaign 
was short; he had only one issue: Introduction of the "open shop/' 
On this platform, in a state with strong trade-union leanings, he 
almost obtained the nomination, running second in a field of five. 

Does this heavy vote for an "open-shop" candidate indicate 
enhanced sympathy for the cause of organized labor? 

San Francisco still is the stronghold of the unions on the Pacific 
Coast, and one of the strongest weapons of the unions is the 
picket line. In 1916 the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce 



14 Union Labor in Peace and War 

initiated an ordinance prohibiting picketing. It sponsored the 
measure openly. As openly the full power of the unions was 
arrayed against it. Few observers familiar with the far-reaching 
power of the San Francisco unions expected the measure to carry; 
the labor leaders confidently predicted its defeat. They fought 
it with all the weapons at their command, yet the anti-picketing 
ordinance was adopted by the vote of the people in the country's 
strongest union town. 

Does that indicate increasing sympathy for the cause of the 
trade unions? 

The wealthiest union in the country for many years concen- 
trated its efforts and its cash upon the unionization of a single 
plant in Los Angeles. For years the California unions have been 
sending men and money into the Angel City, trying to organize 
its workers and to introduce the closed shop. The open shop still 
prevails. 

Does this failure indicate greater strength on the part of organ- 
ized labor? 

Throughout the Far West, from Butte to San Diego, from 
El Paso to Seattle, organized labor in the years before the war 
was losing ground. 

Why this general, widespread antagonism toward organizations 
which once upon a time enjoyed the confidence and good will of 
all classes? 



CHAPTER II 
THE BOYCOTT AND ITS ABUSES 

Twenty years ago the American musicians were confronted by 
a horrible dilemma. Art beckoned to them on one side, Art with 
the capital A — and no other visible assets. On the other side the 
American Federation of Labor stretched out a grimy, utterly 
prosaic hand. The hand itself did not appeal to the musicians, 
but an arm was attached to the hand, and out of the dinner pail 
dangling from the elbow of this arm came the delicious aroma of 
bacon and sausage. Art and bacon fought a great battle. Bacon 
won. The musicians swallowed their pride, cut their hair, joined 
the Federation of Labor, became good union men and soon had 
something more substantial than pride to swallow three times a 
day. 

Organization pays the worker big dividends in higher wages 
and shorter hours. The musicians rapidly discovered this in- 
disputable fact. Their little cliques and groups had been making 
their headquarters in saloons while Art was on the throne; the 
union enabled many of them to build substantial headquarters 
of their own. Before organization they had been glad to play all 
night for two to four dollars in the Middle West; after organiza- 
tion one dollar per hour became the standard rate. As Artists 
they had received a dollar and a half for playing at funerals; as 
union men they received three to five dollars per funeral, with 
something extra if the mourners were to be uplifted by rollicking 
airs on the way home. When they were care-free Bohemians, 
the musical Artists donated their services gratis on Decoration 
Day; as substantial citizens and good musical mechanics loyal 
to the union they were able to charge union rates for patriotic airs 
on all occasions, Memorial Day included. 

Within a very few years after its organization the American 
Federation of Musicians became one of the largest and strongest 
of the unions in the realm of Samuel Gompers; it grew and ex- 
panded until its members obtained an almost airtight monopoly 
in the production of brassy harmonies and stringy discords 
throughout the length and breadth of the land. 

It takes time, money and at least a modicum of talent to 
become a passable musical performer. Compared with the neces- 
sary length of training, the compensation of the average musician 
before organization was totally inadequate. His employment 
was temporary, precarious, fluctuating, and too often he was 
cheated out of his wages. The union procured for him the 



1 6 Union Labor in Peace and War 

merited increase in pay, remedied scores of abuses, improved 
his position, made of the musician a really respected citizen. 

But— - 

Unregulated, unsupervised monopoly is not a good thing for 
any class, group, craft or industry, especially when this monopoly 
is given the right to use weapons considered criminal in other 
hands. 

What would the country say if the railroad managers threat- 
ened to tie up every locomotive unless Congress immediately 
passed a law reducing the wages of the engineers and train men? 

The musicians' union, having practically a monopoly of the 
field, used the strike to lift the wages of its members. When 
the sharp edge of the strike failed, it had recourse to the thumb- 
screw of the boycott. This latter instrument the union used so 
frequently, so indiscriminately that the disgusted theater mana- 
gers of New York, for instance, a few years ago ended their 
incessant union-musician troubles by dispensing with their 
orchestras altogether. And numerous theater managers all over 
the country followed their example. 

Too much boycott killed the musical-monopoly goose that was 
the steadiest layer on the union ranch. 

Here is a sample of the poisonous blossom produced by the 
boycott when the boycotters have virtually a monopoly of the 
field: 

L. R. Greenfield was running two moving-picture theaters in 
San Francisco and doing so well that he built a third one. He 
did not hate the unions. On the contrary, everything in his 
theaters bore the union label. When the union of the crank- 
turners had trouble, Greenfield sided with the union rather than 
with his fellow-employers. 

When he built his new theater, he followed the example of 
hundreds of other modern movie palaces and installed a very 
large organ. Whereupon Musicians' Union No. 6 promptly 
declared a boycott against the theater, advertised the boycott 
in all the labor papers, strung banners across the street in front 
of the place, had pickets patrolling the entrance to the theater 
and did everything in its power to ruin Greenfield's venture. 

Greenfield had broken no union rules; he was discharging no 
union men; he was boycotted merely because he preferred the 
music produced by one union organist to the strains of a union 
orchestra. 

Greenfield, located in the heart of the union-labor stronghold, 
could not afford to be classed as "unfair to organized labor." 
He gave in. He notified the musicians' union that he had a per- 
fectly good and most expensive concert organ on his hands and 
must use it, but that, if the union would cancel the boycott, he 



The Boycott and Its Abuses 17 

was willing to put four musicians on his payroll at the union scale 
without requiring any work of any kind from them. 

Did the musicians' union accept this most liberal offer? 

It did not. It demanded that Greenfield put six union mem- 
bers on his payroll before it would lift the boycott. 

Whereupon Greenfield lost patience and, despite the strenuous 
efforts of the musicians to hush the thing up, presented his case 
before the Central Labor Council. 

That body put its foot down hard, but not on Greenfield. The 
tactics of the musicians' union were a little too raw. The boy- 
cott was lifted and union men today are allowed to patronize the 
Greenfield shows, to listen to the strains of the organ without 
having to fear a fine for the benefit of the union treasury. 

Please, kind reader, remember that organization, the union, 
procured for the musician better pay, improved working con- 
ditions, a respected place in the economic structure. No one can 
find fault with the musicians, with any man, capitalist or worker, 
organized or unorganized, for demanding and going after that 
which rightfully is his due, yet there should be no hesitation 
born of sentiment or fear in pointing out the shortcomings of any 
class when it uses a club to obtain something which is rightfully 
the other man's due. 

If the boycott levied by the musicians' union against the Green- 
field picture show were an isolated phenomenon it would not be 
worth mentioning. But unfortunately the musicians, the labor 
unions in general, have used the weapon of the boycott so in- 
discriminately, often so stupidly, so viciously that the boycott's 
edge has not only been dulled until it no longer cuts — except in 
the case of helpless firms or individuals — but this stupidly in- 
discriminate use has given powerful support to the movement 
which aims to prohibit the boycott by legal enactment. 

Here are a few samples, picked at random from a mountain 
of material, concerning the stupidity and viciousness in the appli- 
cation of the weapon which have rendered the boycott ineffective 
and decidedly unpopular: 

The Scottish societies of Oakland, California, planned a 
memorial celebration in honor of Robert Burns. The committee 
arranged for a number of selections by a bagpipe orchestra in 
order to give the celebration the real Scotch flavor. Unfor- 
tunately the bare-kneed Hee'land pipers were not members of 
the musicians' union. When the committee declined to eliminate 
the pipers from the program, substituting the common or union 
variety of music, the union promptly declared a boycott against 
the celebration and the guests had to march through two lines 
of vociferous pickets to reach the hall. 




The union picket became such a nuisance that San Francisco by popular 
vote prohibited picketing. The ordinance is partially nullified by the 
failure of the pro-union administration to enforce its provisions 



The Boycott and its Abuses 19 

Still there is this to be said in mitigation: Porridge, Scotch 
whisky and the works of Bobbie Burns were not placed on the 
"unfair-to-organized-labor" list. 

The Scotch societies were not the only social organization to 
feel the wrath of the musicians.' union. 

The Native Sons of the Golden West were boycotted for years 
merely because they refused to place the amateur bands of the order 
under the control of the musicians' union. Though the Native 
Son bands never competed with professional musicians, though 
they refrained from playing even for the order when a profit might 
be made out of their syncopated efforts, still the union insisted 
upon the right to control the appointment of the leaders, to 
regulate the time and conditions of the bands' performances and 
stipulated that the members, regardless of their private business, 
regardless of the fact that music was merely their recreational 
hobby, should pledge themselves at all times to live up to the 
union rules. When the order declined to place its bands under 
the control of the union, organized labor proclaimed a boycott 
against the Native Sons, keeping it in force for several years. 

Allen E. King owns a moving-picture theater in Oakland, 
California. He employed two operators until the public, dis- 
gusted with the quality of the films sent out by the manufacturers 
began patronizing the movies in decreasing numbers. Watching 
his dwindling receipts, King decided that he must cut expenses 
or close up, so he gave one of the operators two weeks' notice. 
Immediately he received a call from the business agent of the 
union. He must not discharge the operator. The union would 
not stand for it. Should he persist in his evil intention, the busi- 
ness agent threatened to have the theater boycotted and the 
owner's business ruined. 

Whether the owner could or could not afford to keep an extra 
operator on the payroll, that feature did not worry the business 
agent. 

One of the most common causes for the infliction of the boycott 
is the refusal of the employer to force all his employees to join 
the union. In other words, the boycott is frequently inflicted by 
the unions to put into effect a blacklist of their own, for it is clear 
that a person who, for reasons of his own, declines to join the 
union would be at perfect liberty to starve in peace if the boycott 
could be made effective. In passing it should be pointed out that 
the blacklisting of union men by employers has been made a 
crime in thirty states, but that the blacklisting of non-union men 
by organized labor is so common an occurrence that it is unques- 
tioningly accepted everywhere. Yet there is no difference 
whatsoever in the denial of the right to work no matter who does 
the denying. 



2o Union Labor in Peace and War 

A flagrant instance of the use of the boycott to force workers 
into the union whether they want to join or not is the ban placed 
upon a cafeteria in Oakland. 

The proprietors of the place paid wages higher than the union 
scale; the women employed by them were restricted to an eight- 
hour day by a state law. The employees had nothing to gain by 
joining the union, yet the business agent of Waitresses' Union 
No. 48 demanded that the owners force their employees to join 
the union and that no waitresses be employed except through the 
union office. 

In addition the agreement submitted by the business agent 
contained the following regulations: 

"Steady girls cannot shell peas, string rhubarb, peel apples; 
they must not clean coffee urns, windows, ice boxes or scrub 
chairs." 

"The lunch girls must not sweep, clean catsup or mustard 
bottles nor polish silver; they must not pick strawberries. " 

In other words, if the waitresses have nothing to do during the 
working period for which they are paid, they must sit by idly 
while extra help is hired to polish the silver. 

When the owners of the cafeteria declined to force their 
waitresses into the union, a boycott was declared and remained 
in force for years. 

In July, 191 5, the Langendorf Bakery of San Francisco en- 
gaged the services of a chemist who had built up a reputation in 
the manufacture of a certain kind of bread. When the chemist 
arrived, the firm was notified by the business agent of the bakers' 
union that the place should have been offered a member of the 
union and that a boycott would follow if the chemist were allowed 
to work. The firm immediately asked the business agent to 
submit the names of technically trained, experienced bread 
chemists. Though no names were forthcoming, the imported 
chemist was not allowed to assume his duties until, through the 
threat of a boycott, he had been obliged to join the bakers' union. 

A week after the Quaker cafeteria opened for business in 
Sacramento, California, organized labor put the place on the 
"unfair" list and established a picket line to keep trade away and 
to take down the names of union members patronizing the 
restaurant that they might be fined for violation of the boycott. 
The boycott was levied at the request of the cooks' and waiters' 
union to force the owner to discharge a non-union cook and to 
keep the owner's daughter from singing in the cafeteria. 

Not even the dead can escape the boycott. Some years ago 
the last rites were being said over the body of Mrs. Cecelia Eadon 
in San Francisco when the business agent of the chauffeurs' union 
drove up and ordered the union chauffeurs not to move if an 



The Boycott and Its Abuses 21 

"unfair" cab should join the procession. This cab had been 
donated by a friend of the dead woman who happened to be the 
wife of a boycotted undertaker. To avoid delay, the mourners 
in the "unfair" cab drove to the cemetery before the services 
were over, but they were followed by a union agent and the 
funeral was delayed for almost an hour and a half until the 
mourners left the "unfair" cab and the machine departed from 
the cemetery. 

The word "boycott" is a product of the Ould Sod. Its godfather 
was a Captain Boycott, agent of an English landlord, who be- 
stowed upon the Irish tenants in his power treatment so harsh 
and cruel that at a given moment the entire countryside refused 
to have anything to do with him. His servants vanished, his 
hired help quit, his mail was not delivered and no one could be 
induced to stir a hand for him. Though a thousand armed 
Ulstermen came to harvest his crops, ultimately the total cessa- 
tion of social and business intercourse forced him to leave Ireland. 

The encyclopedia defines the boycott as a conspiracy on the 
part of a number of persons to inflict damage and injury upon an 
individual. And the encyclopedia adds that in most countries 
the boycott has been declared illegal and its use restricted by the 
courts. This restriction, in the United States at least, does not 
apply to the direct or primary boycott. 

In the primary boycott the wrath of organized labor is directed 
solely against the person or firm declining to grant the union 
demands. Practically all of the instances cited above are ex- 
amples of the primary boycott, and the primary boycott has 
been held to be within the law by nearly every court in the United 
States. The secondary boycott, however, has been declared 
illegal with almost the same unanimity by the American courts. 
And the classic example of the secondary boycott is the case of 
the Danbury hatters for whose benefit the American Federation 
of Labor is still trying to collect a sum in excess of #300,000. 

This famous case originated in a dispute between the hatters' 
union of Danbury, Connecticut, and the firm of D. E. Loewe & 
Co., hat manufacturers. The union, of course, reached for the 
boycott the moment it was seen that the prospect of winning 
was exceedingly slim. But this boycott was not confined to the 
Loewe firm; it was extended to include hundreds of hat and fur- 
nishing stores throughout the country. Merchants who declined 
to obey the union and discontinue the sale of Loewe hats were 
boycotted, picket lines thrown across the entrances to their 
stores and their names were placed on the "unfair list" in dozens 
of union-labor publications. 

These merchants had nothing whatsoever to do with the 
dispute between the hat manufacturers and their men. The 



22 Union Labor in Peace and War 

union had the right so strongly to influence organized labor and 
the public in general that not a single Loewe hat might move 
from the merchants' shelves, thus ruining its antagonists without 
giving them a chance to strike back. But when the union over- 
stepped the bounds, when it used the secondary boycott to force 
hundreds of merchants through threats of pecuniary losses and 
possible ruin to cease buying Loewe hats, it deliberately wrecked 
the boat while crossing the barred zone. 

The hat manufacturers immediately brought suit for damages 
against the union and its every member. Though the legal 
talent and the funds of the American Federation of Labor came 
to the aid of the hatters, the employers won. From the federal 
district court to the Supreme Court of the United States the 
case went, and in every instance the secondary boycott was de- 
clared illegal, the verdict against the hatters' union was con- 
firmed. The Loewe Company obtained judgment against all 
the members of the union and scores of the Danbury hatters will 
lose their homes unless their brother unionists come to their 
assistance and raise almost #400,000 to satisfy the judgments. 

Since the Supreme Court decision in the Danbury hatters' 
case organized labor everywhere has been exceedingly cautious 
in the use of the double-edged, expensive secondary boycott — 
except in California and Montana. While the courts of England, 
the federal courts and the bench of almost every American state 
have ruled against the secondary boycott as an unwarranted 
interference with the rights of innocent third parties, the supreme 
courts of California and Montana have taken the contrary view. 
Hence California and Montana, significantly containing San 
Francisco and Butte, the two strongest fortresses of union labor 
in the United States, are still covered with the itching rash of 
the secondary boycott. 

An example of the manner in which the secondary boycott 
works out is supplied by the union ban upon the use of hardwood 
flooring strips made by "open-shop" labor. 

Practically all floor workers in San Francisco are members of 
the union. Though no hardwood material originates in or near 
San Francisco, the Building Trades Council has decreed that no 
"unfair" boards can be placed in San Francisco floors. Should a 
contractor persist in using "unfair-to-organized-labor" material, 
his men will strike and he will be driven out of business through 
the boycott. Presumably this boycott is placed on hardwood 
strips in the interest of American labor unions, but it does not 
work out that way when the veil is lifted. 

San Francisco has the choice of two sources of supply for hard- 
wood strips. It can use the white oak cut in the Middle West and 
South by American labor, manufactured in American mills and 



The Boycott and Its Abuses 23 

transported by American railroads. Or it can apply to the 
Mitsui company for Japanese oak cut in Japan by Japanese 
labor, manufactured in Japanese mills and transported in Japan- 
ese steamers. 

The Mitsui company has exclusive control over the importa- 
tion of Japanese oak shipped to America in rough strips. It also 
has a contract with the Inlaid Floor Company of San Francisco 
under which practically all of the imported oak goes to this 
concern, which consists of seventeen labor union men. They 
run the oak strips through their planers and presto! the timber 
cut by cheap Japanese labor, sawed by cheap Japanese labor, 
transported by cheap Japanese labor suddenly becomes "fair" 
to the organized labor of San Francisco, or at least to seventeen 
San Francisco union men. Running the cheap-labor Japanese 
oak through a planer operated by a San Francisco union man 
entitles the product to the union label. Without this label it is 
boycotted. 

Eastern oak, cut, manufactured and transported by high- 
priced American workers, many of them union men, cannot be 
used in San Francisco because the Eastern mills do not employ 
union men exclusively. Hence the Eastern white oak, in order 
to remove the open-shop odor, must be run through a union mill 
in San Francisco to become "fair" at an extra and wholly un- 
necessary cost of four to six dollars per thousand feet. This 
extra cost bars American oak out of the San Francisco market. 
Hence the only effect of the boycott, besides putting money 
into the pockets of seventeen union members, is to force the 
entire San Francisco hardwood floor trade to buy the product of 
cheap oriental labor against which the unions have been carrying 
on a vigorous campaign for sixty years. 

The city of Stockton lies a hundred miles inland from San 
Francisco on the navigable San Joaquin river in the midst of a 
highly productive farming region. Its strategic location attracted 
a great many industries, but the industrial growth has not been 
an unmixed blessing. For many years Stockton was in a state 
of continuous turmoil and irritation caused by the incessant 
attempts of the labor leaders to make it impossible for even one 
non-union man to work for a living in the city. The boycott was 
one of the principal weapons used to enforce the demands, and 
its indiscriminate application in 1914 led to a series of disastrous 
strikes which shook the community clear to its foundations. 
The following are a few of the demands which the unions endeav- 
ored to enforce by means of the boycott: 

Twenty unions insisted that no employer should hire an out- 
of-town worker so long as a single member of the twenty Stockton 
unions remained idle. 



24 Union Labor in Peace and War 

The plumbers' union demanded that any member owning a 
bicycle should be forbidden the use of the vehicle on his way 
from the shop to the job. Walking would, of course, use up more 
time. 

If a small contracting bricklayer or plasterer had a one-day 
job, the rules barred him from mixing his own mortar. He must 
not only employ a union hod-carrier for the task, but in addition 
he must pay the union hod-carrier a full day's wages even if the 
mortar-mixing were done in an hour. 

The business agent or walking delegate of any union, according 
to the demands, must have the right to visit all jobs or plants 
at any time, to talk with any employee and, if necessary, to have 
the men stop the machinery to listen to him. 

Tailors or printers were to be forced to surrender their jobs 
temporarily to needy union members at the request of the union 
secretary, regardless of the needy one's fitness for the job. 

No carpet mechanic was to be allowed to cut, fit or lay carpets 
unless a union member had taken the measurements. If the 
purchaser should take the measurements himself, the merchant 
would have to send a union man to do the work over again. 

The employers were to be obliged not only to deduct the union 
dues from the wages of their employees, but likewise to hold 
back any assessment or fines levied by the business agent. 

To enforce these and other regulations of a similar nature the 
Stockton unions employed the boycott ruthlessly. In the period 
from 1903 to 191 7 more than a hundred firms and individuals 
were boycotted. Stockton's largest department store was put 
out of business through the boycott. Clothing merchants, 
grocers, barbers, contractors, hotels, restaurants, coal dealers, 
livery stables, printers, shoe dealers, engine works, carriage 
builders, iron works were driven out of business through the 
boycott. Even a dentist had to give up his practice and move 
away because the labor leaders set the forces of the boycott in 
motion against him. 

Before me lies a typewritten partial list of the boycotts declared 
in Stockton since 1903, a list covering four full pages. The results 
of these boycotts are significant. With few exceptions it was the 
weak firm, the modest contractor, the struggling tradesman, the 
debt-ridden enterprise that succumbed; wealthy, successful 
solidly established firms and enterprises felt the boycott merely 
as a pin prick, annoying and somewhat painful, but not at all 
chmgerous. It is the little fellow who suffers while the big one 
calmly goes his way, unconscious of the cobweb barriers with 
which the leaders of organized labor are trying to bar his way. 
Not infrequently it happens that the business of a strongly 
intrenched firm increases under the boycott. Thus a certain 






The Boycott and Its Abuses 25 

lithographic company of San Francisco, after a boycott lasting 
more than a year, suggested to the Central Labor Council that 
the boycott be suspended until the firm could catch up with the 
abnormal flood of orders, when the stimulating ban might be 
resumed. 

If every union man obeyed the mandate of the leaders and 
refused to patronize boycotted firms, the ordinary channels of 
business would be clogged in twenty-four hours. Practically all 
the important railway systems of the Far West are on one 
"unfair" list or another, have been on these lists almost since 
the last bellow of the last buffalo. But, so far as I can discover, 
no union man with the price of the ticket has ever walked across 
the mountains and deserts of the West because he did not want 
to patronize the boycotted railroads. Nor has the sale of two- 
score nationally known commodities shown the slightest decrease 
because their manufacturers were boycotted; in fact, practically 
all of them have experienced a normal, healthy growth. 

The truth of the matter is that the neutral portion of the 
population, the ninety million persons neither directly nor in- 
directly affiliated with labor unions, are weary of the boycott. 
They have seen it applied so often, with so little reason, with so 
little regard for the consequences, they have been badgered and 
harried so incessantly with request, demands and orders not to 
patronize this firm, to cease buying that commodity, that they 
calmly go their way, disregarding all appeals. The boycott has 
been overdone. As a result of abuse it has lost its cutting edge. 
Except in flagrant cases of exploitation on the part of the em- 
ployer the days of its usefulness to organized labor are practically 
over. Only in strongly unionized communities, and there only 
in strongly unionized trades, does the boycott continue to be a 
formidable weapon, formidable at least to the smallest and weak- 
est among the employers. 

San Francisco is strongly unionized. In the building trades the 
"closed shop" prevails; non-union men are blacklisted. Under 
these conditions the boycott is fatal when levied against the 
average building contractor. Unable to obtain workmen, unable 
to join the union and therefore unable to support himself as a 
journeyman, he either has to leave town or go into another 
business. Under the circumstances it would seem that the 
application of the boycott would be surrounded by all possible 
safeguards to prevent its infliction upon an innocent person. 

Is it? 

A plastering contractor last year remonstrated with the 
business agent of the plasterers' union who was cursing the 
contractor's employees for doing too much work. The contractor 
called the business agent's attention to the union rule which 



26 Union Labor in Peace and War 

prohibited direct intercourse with the men during working hours 
and requested him to transact his business with the shop steward. 
When the business agent refused, the contractor threw him out. 
Two hours later the men were called out. 

Two days later a boycott was declared against the contractor's 
father, also a plastering contractor, by the executive committee 
of the Building Trades Council. He had violated no union rule; 
he was paying union wages, working union hours, employing none 
but union men. Yet, because he advised and supported his son 
in his dispute with the business agent, he was arbitrarily boy- 
cotted and threatened with ultimate ruin. 

In any serious discussion of the labor problem undertaken with 
the object of shedding even a faint glimmer of light on the path 
which may lead to the ultimate solution, it should never be 
forgotten that almost every weapon, every measure of the labor 
unions was at some time, at some place, caused and justified by 
intolerable conditions of employment. The labor unions have 
no monopoly of greed, unreasonableness and arbitrary intoler- 
ance; of these qualities there is to be found an abundant supply in 
all strata of the industrial structure, from attic to basement. 
Yet any unbiased observer must admit that, on the Pacific 
Coast at least, enlightened adaptation to changing conditions is 
proceeding faster among employers than among the leaders of 
labor's regiments. 

The old-style labor leaders of the Pacific Coast cannot as yet 
understand that the heyday, the unrestricted use, of the boycott 
and its effectiveness are definitely past. Employeis and the neu- 
tral public have made immense, far-reaching concessions to labor 
in the last ten years. Law after law restricting the economic 
power of the employer has been placed on the statute books; in 
California especially dozens of measures for the special benefit 
of the working man have been enacted during the last few years. 
Is it too much to ask of organized labor to surrender in return an 
obsolete weapon blunted by frequent misuse, to remove a source 
of incessant irritation and annoyance, to do away with the second- 
ary boycott which has already been declared illegal by the courts 
of all Western states except California and Montana? 

The pressing necessity for the use of this weapon has passed 
long ago. Against powerful employers it is worse than useless. 
Against the small employer it becomes the potential weapon of 
tyranny and oppression when used by men responsible for their 
actions not even to their own followers. It is time that it join the 
blacklist, the twelve-hour day and the company-store in the cab- 
inet of industrial curiosities. 



CHAPTER III 
WHO KILLED COCK ROBIN? 

They found a dead man in Leicester, England, seventeen years 
ago. He had cut his throat. Beside the body lay a note in which 
the suicide explained that his shopmates had made life a burden to 
him and that he decided to end it all when he received a summons 
to appear before the officials of the boot and shoe workers' union. 

Why was he summoned before the union officials? 

To explain why he persisted in doing too much work. 

He had gone from shoe factory to shoe factory, quitting after 
short periods when his fellow-workers began to make things 
unpleasant for him because he did more work than they. No- 
where did he find peace. When at last the union took official 
cognizance of his industry, the foolish worker committed suicide. 

Do you know what "Ca' canny" is? 

"Ca* canny, mon, ca' canny," says Jock when Sandy walks 
too fast. "Go easy, man, go easy." "Ca' canny" became a generic 
term during the British shipping troubles of 1896 when the 
sailors used the "Go easy" policy to bring the owners to terms 
by increasing the cost of operating the ships. The term was new 
but the policy was not. It pervaded British trade unionism and 
its wide-spread application caused British industry to lose por- 
tions even of its home markets. 

And what has all this to do with the dead shoe worker of 
Leicester? 

British industry was not holding its own before the war. 
Many circumstances contributed to its relative deterioration, 
and there is abundant testimony that the "Go easy" policy of 
the trade unionists helped this weakening process along. Here 
are a few of the results: 

A century and a half ago German workers were brought into 
England by Lord Delavel to manufacture the dark bottles used 
mainly for wine. The industry expanded until a dozen works 
were supplying the home market. Before the war the Germans 
had practically reconquered the English market for these bottles 
and the English union of bottle blowers had enabled them to do 
it. The union dominated the trade. The union opposed the 
introduction of the improved German machinery which increased 
the output per man and decreased the amount of skill necessary 
in the trade. The union succeeded in maintaining its control, 
but the industry almost vanished. 



28 Union Labor in Peace and War 

The flint-glass factories produce table ware, vases, decorated 
glass and globes for lighting fixtures. Forty years ago fifty plants 
manufactured flint-glass in Great Britain. Before the war their 
number had shrunk to barely twenty; ninety per cent of the 
flint-glass used in England came from Germany and Austria, 
which nations had also captured the export markets formerly 
supplied by Britain. The flint-glass trade in England is domi- 
nated by the union. It is an absolutely "closed shop." The men 
work in shifts of six hours and the men themselves determine 
what the output of any given design shall be per shift. In one 
instance the men were turning out a widely sold export article at 
the rate of eighty in six hours. By-and-by continental glass 
houses began to undersell the English manufacturers and take 
their markets away from them. In order to be able to compete 
the men were requested to increase the output. They agreed to 
remove the low limit and to make one hundred instead of eighty 
per shift. 

The new arrangement had been in force for some time when a 
general officer of the union notified the employer that the out- 
put had been raised without his consent and that the lower 
number must be restored within two weeks on a penalty of a 
strike. 

Wrote a flint-glass manufacturer: 

"The only conclusion left to a glass-master is that some of the 
leaders (of the union) could not do worse if they were secretly 
subsidized by the German glass-hands to ruin the English trade." 

Sheffield scissors, razors and cutlery used to be the standard 
the world over. The famous scissors were made from a rod of 
steel by the hand-forgers' union and ground by the grinders' 
union. When German manufacturers proceeded to use stamping 
machines instead of hand labor to produce scissors and razors, 
they so far reduced the cost of production that they not only 
captured the English colonial but a large part of the English 
home market as well. When the English manufacturers intro- 
duced automatic machines, the grinders' union declined to reduce 
its rate for grinding the more uniform machine product, thus 
keeping the cost high. No more machinery was installed and 
the trade gradually dwindled. For similar reasons the razor 
industry declined from year to year. In other Sheffield trades 
the gradual decay was arrested only when the manufacturers 
broke the hold of the union and, against the opposition of the 
craft organizations, introduced automatic machinery which en- 
abled them to compete with other nations on fairly equal terms. 

Restriction of output on the part of the London Society of 
Lithographic Printers caused more and more of the color-printing 
work originating in London to go to other cities or to Germany. 



Who Killed Cock Robin? 29 

The union had no official rule limiting the output, but any man 
who exceeded the limit tacitly agreed upon found himself in hot 
water. When another lithographic union composed of younger 
men entered London, hours were not increased and no cut in 
wages was made, but the output restriction ceased to be enforced 
and costs fell more than fifteen per cent, this reduction imme- 
diately checking the rush of orders to Germany. 

An English steel mill introduced electrically driven machines 
for the charging of open-hearth furnaces. It expected to follow 
the foreign practice and have one man operate three of the 
charging machines. Instead, the union demanded that the three 
men which had been charging each furnace by hand be retained, 
the machines notwithstanding, thus enabling eight men to draw 
wages for enjoying their smoke while one man did the work. 
After prolonged negotiations the union consented to a rearrange- 
ment which absorbed a large share of cost reduction for which 
the machines had been installed. 

The same practice more or less permeated all the metal trades. 
The conditions surrounding the introduction of labor-saving 
machinery caused such disputes that in many instances this 
automatic machinery had to be housed in special buildings as 
a protection against union men, and when the unions did accept 
the inevitable they endeavored to introduce the rule that one 
man should tend only one machine, even though in other coun- 
tries two or three of the machines were operated by one workman. 

Right here let us pause to remark that in most instances the 
trouble resulting from the introduction of labor-saving machinery 
is fully as much traceable to the selfishness of the employer as to 
the unreasonable demands of the union men. In the case of the 
British shoe industry, for instance, the employers considered the 
introduction of American machinery an auspicious moment to 
change the rate of pay from the piece to the time basis. In other 
words, they hoped to appropriate the entire increase in produc- 
tion to themselves. The union, on the other hand, proposed to 
retain the old handwork rates for the enormously increased 
machine output, conceding the employer only the interest on the 
capital invested in the new machines. Thus both sides claimed 
the entire benefit resulting from the introduction of machinery 
and a deadlock was the consequence. 

Admitting the blind selfishness of human nature which causes 
both employers and workers to try to appropriate the full bene- 
fit of new inventions to themselves, yet it is a fact that restriction 
of output in many guises assisted in making possible the German 
victories of 191 5. 

"Either we must tell the soldiers that we are sorry that we can- 
not get the guns to enable them to win throughout 1916, owing 



30 Union Labor in Peace and War 

to the trade-union regulations, or we must tell them that if they 
manage to hold out for another year perhaps American workmen 
will help us get a sufficient supply for 1917. I cannot return to 
Parliament and report through the House of Commons to the 
British army that skilled workmen won't suspend their rules to 
save their fellow-countrymen's lives on the battlefield. " 

No union baiter, no professional enemy of organized labor made 
this statement. Lloyd George, champion of the rights of English 
labor, addressed these words to the British Trade Union Con- 
gress on the dark night of Christmas, 191 5, six months after the 
passage of the Munitions of War Act, which contains the following 
clause: 

"Any rule, practice or custom not having the force of law which 
tends to restrict production or employment shall be suspended in 
the establishment, and if any person induces or attempts to induce 
any other person (whether any particular person or generally) to 
comply, or continue to comply, with such a rule, practice, or custom, 
that person shall be guilty of an offense under this Act" 

In the hour of her trial England found it necessary to pass a 
law against the restriction of output in the vital munitions fac- 
tories by the trade unions. Despite the law and its penalties, 
despite the urgings of patriotism, despite the disasters in the field, 
the output restrictions continued until Lloyd George, through 
personal appeal to the leaders and to the men, brought about 
their reluctant removal. 

Since then the remarkable, almost incredible increase in the 
output of the British factories has been the marvel of the in- 
dustrial world, though this increase was by no means entirely 
due to the removal of union restrictions. 

The United States has gone to war. The United States today 
is in a position similar to the one in which Great Britain found 
herself in 191 5. The United States must raise, equip and train 
huge armies. This necessitates a reduction of the available 
productive labor. At the same time the output of practically 
every factory, shipyard and farm must be increased. Never was 
the demand for labor more insistent; never has the proportionate 
supply been smaller. 

Under the circumstances it becomes proper to put this ques- 
tion: Do the rules and practices of American trade unions tend 
to restrict output? 

In answering the question, the scope of the inquiry will be 
restricted to the Pacific Coast and more especially to San Fran- 
cisco, strongest citadel of unionism. 

The first exhibit consists of the by-laws of the ship caulkers' 
union. These by-laws provided in 1916 that eight hours shall 
constitute the length of the working day, that five dollars shall 



Who Killed Cock Robin? 31 

be the standard wage. They also provided that one hundred feet 
of side seam or one hundred and fifty feet of deck seam shall 
constitute a day's task on old work. 

It is a fact that an average caulker sufficiently skilled to entitle 
him to union wages could turn out a great deal more work in 
eight hours than the maximum fixed by the union without 
unduly "speeding up." Merely by keeping resonably busy the 
average caulker could complete 135 feet of side or 200 feet of 
deck seam. But he didn't. He was very careful not to exceed 
the maximum and lay himself open to a fine. When he went to 
work in the morning, he took a string, measured off the day's 
allotment of 100 or 150 feet respectively and saw to it that the 
stint was not exceeded. 

Observe that the English caulkers' union before the war fixed 
the maximum daily output at 120 feet of deck seam, 30 feet less 
than the San Francisco union. 

In this discussion it should be remembered that the average 
union workman is neither lazy nor dishonest. If he adopts the 
"Go easy" policy, his motives are not always sefish. He may wish 
to prolong the job he is working on if he sees no new work in sight 
and fears to be laid off, but more often he holds back, wastes 
time and fails to put forth his best efforts because he hopes 
through his loafing to increase the number of employed members 
of his craft. 

The caulkers and ship carpenters, however, are only a small 
part of the industrial army that must be mobilized on the Pacific 
Coast to meet the emergency of war demands. Every foundry, 
every machine shop, every steel ship yard, every plant manu- 
facturing engines, tractors, motors must be able to increase its 
output. 

If the contentions of the trade union leaders are correct, San 
Francisco should have been able to hold and to increase its in- 
dustrial lead materially. The leaders of organized labor claim 
that the best workmen belong to the unions, that non-union men 
as a class are inferior in skill and ability and that union men 
therefore perform more and better work than non-union men. 
They further claim that non-union men, working longer hours for 
smaller wages, are chronically discontented and naturally take 
less interest in their work than better paid union men who give 
the best that is in them and whose employer therefore is able to 
produce his commodity for less money, other conditions being 
equal, than the employer of non-union mechanics. 

If this is a fair statement of the claims of organized labor, the 
city employing the highest percentage of union men in its es- 
tablishments should logically show the highest percentage of 
industrial growth. If, on the other hand, trade unions do not 



3* 



Union Labor in Peace and War 



produce a greater output of higher grade for the higher wages 
they receive, if they restrict output tacitly or openly, if they 
increase the cost of production by rules designed to give em- 
ployment to as many union men as possible regardless of cost, 
then it follows that the most thoroughly organized community 
must inevitably show the smallest percentage of industrial 
growth especially in those lines exposed to the active competition 
of communities where the unions do not completely dominate the 
field. 

The following table, compiled from the reports of the U. S. 
Census Bureau, contains in cold figures the strongest possible 
indictment of the short-sighted policy followed by the San 
Francisco trade unions: 



MANUFACTURING DATA, BUREAU OF 
No. Of 
City Establishments 

1899 1914 Increase 

Salt Lake 154 366 212 

Spokane 84 278 194 

Portland 408 837 429 

Seattle 352 1014 672 

Oakland... 195 573 378 

Los Angeles 534 1911 1377 

San Francisco 1748 2334 586 

*Decrease 



THE CEN 


3US 




No. of 


Wage Earners 


1899 


1 91 4 Increase 


2154 


4931 2777 


1060 


3021 1971 


538o 


11271 5891 


4440 


12429 7989 


2476 


7692 5216 


5i73 


31352 26179 


32555 


3i75 8 *797 



The following are figures compiled by the Census Bureau 
giving the changes in particular San Francisco trades during the 
decade from 1904 to 191 4: 

BRASS, COPPER AND BRONZE PRODUCTS 

1904 1914 

No. Establishments 15 13 

Employees 324 122 

COPPER, TIN AND SHEET IRON PRODUCTS 

No. Establishments 50 90 

Employees 1466 1 187 

FOUNDRY AND MACHINE SHOP PRODUCTS 

No. Establishments 172 243 

Employees 3885 2383 

LUMBER AND TIMBER PRODUCTS 

No. Establishments 52 59 

Employees 1262 1420 

BOAT AND SHIPBUILDING 

No. Establishments 24 16 

Employees 3465 2130 



Who Killed Cock Robin? 33 

The reason for this decline? 

I was discussing labor conditions with the proprietor of a 
San Francisco machine shop. 

"Is there restriction of output? According to my observation 
in my own line, the San Francisco machinists are just about 
fifty per cent efficient. My men average five dollars a day. I 
could and would pay them fifty per cent more if they would do a 
full day's work because my profit would be greater than under the 
present five-dollar scale. I am rushed with orders, so rushed 
that I need at least three additional mechanics. I can't get union 
men. If I employ non-union men, the entire force walks out. 
What can I do about it? Move out of San Francisco, across the 
bay! My new plant is now going up over there where I can put 
on seventy-five men whether they belong to the union or not. 

"Let me tell you of an instance that occurred recently. A few 
days ago a first-class mechanic whom I had known in the East 
came in here. He had gone to work in a shop cutting gear blanks. 
Having been doing work on a piece basis, he started at his usual 
pace and cut twenty-eight to thirty blanks in eight hours. At 
once he was told by the other mechanics not to queer the job. 
Why? Because the man on the following shift was turning out 
only eight blanks in eight hours!" 

A San Francisco firm sells patented stump pullers. It has no 
factory of its own. This firm asked for bids on ten thousand of 
the machines, assembled and ready for delivery. Half a dozen 
San Francisco firms put in bids, but the order went to Portland, 
Oregon, because the San Francisco bids were twenty to one 
hundred per cent higher than the other offers. 

The San Francisco manufacturers explained that they could 
not meet the Portland bids on account of higher labor costs. In 
Portland the manufacturers were able to run automatic machines 
performing the same operation ten thousand times with "special- 
ists" — semi-skilled workers — at a higher speed and for less wages; 
in San Francisco the union required the employment of journey- 
men machinists at full union rates for every operation. Also, 
the San Francisco union held down the number of apprentices 
and privately opposed the employment of "specialists" in an 
effort to retain as much work as possible for its members, no 
matter whether the nature of the work was such that a green 
man could learn to perform it efficiently in a month or two. 

From instances of this character can be deduced the reason 
why San Francisco's industrial growth has lagged behind that of 
its competitors, why the oldest and most important industrial 
center of the Pacific Coast was rapidly turning into a jobbing and 
repair instead of manufacturing center before the war stimulus 
with its total disregard of production costs made itself felt. 



34 Union Labor in Peace and War 

San Francisco fell behind not because its industries were one 
hundred per cent unionized. Every unbiased observer admits 
that as a rule there are far more of the best and most compe- 
tent mechanics within the unions than outside their ranks. 
The slump did not come primarily because San Francisco employers 
paid their men higher wages and worked them shorter hours than 
in competing districts. The damage was done because the unions, 
instead of helping the employers to meet open-shop competition by 
the utmost co-operation, used their power to retard the process of 
production, to increase costs and to retain their monopoly even if 
the industry should die. 

The unions in the Sheffield cutlery trades, in the flint-glass 
industry and in many other branches fought the introduction 
and full utilization of improved machinery, closed the union 
against outsiders, sharply limited the number of apprentices and 
saw to it that, through restriction of output, the largest possible 
number of union members should be kept employed. In spite 
of all these measures the number of union men steadily decreased 
when one plant after the other, unable to withstand outside com- 
petition, closed its doors. One hundred per cent organization 
killed the trade because it did not deliver one hundred per cent 
efficiency in return for high wages, short hours and labor 
monopoly. 

It could have done so. The cotton spinners and weavers of 
Lancashire are one hundred per cent organized. They do not 
restrict the number of apprentices; on the contrary, they insist 
that there shall be ten times more learners than could possibly 
be used as operatives in order to be able to select the best and 
fittest; they do not oppose the introduction of improved processes 
nor do they try to hold the individual output to a low level in 
order to give employment to a larger number. Years ago the 
union leaders realized the futility, the ineffectiveness of these 
expedients in the field of international competition. They 
adopted a totally different policy. They based the workers' com- 
pensation upon the individual output, insisting only upon a collect- 
ively fixed piece rate fair to both worker and employer. They 
demanded and obtained a fair share of the increased product 
derived from improved machinery and, realizing that the pros- 
perity of the entire industry depended upon its average efficiency, 
they penalized the backward employer by a higher piece rate 
until he was forced to instal the very latest machinery. 

Thanks to this enlightened policy of the union the Lancashire 
cotton textile industry maintained its world leadership. Its 
operatives worked reasonable hours, received excellent wages and 
yet the manufacturers were able to hold more than their own 
even against the product of the child labor exploited in the cotton 
mills of the American South. 



Who Killed Cock Robin? 35 

In San Francisco limitation of apprentices, of output, bitter, 
opposition to piece work, refusal to recognize individual efficiency 
even as a partial measure of compensation still hold full sway. 
Trades one hundred per cent organized, receiving higher wages 
and working shorter hours than trades in competing territory, 
still decline to make an effort to deliver one hundred per cent 
efficiency, refuse to demonstrate that union men working under 
strictly union conditions enable their employers to compete 
successfully with non-union plants. The result of this policy is 
stated below, in extracts of letters printed in Volume 6, Testimony 
and Report of the Commission on Industrial Relations, issued by 
the Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C. 

"You have our permission to submit the name of our firm to 
the United States Commission on Industrial Relations as one 
that was forced to move out of San Francisco through impositions 
of union labor," writes J. W. Mason, president of the Western 
Pipe and Steel Company. 

"We are hardly able to qualify your statement that we were 
obliged by reason of labor-union conditions to remove our plant 
from San Francisco," states F. J. Behneman, manager of the 
Joshua Hendy Iron Works. 

A. Warenskjold, of the Atlas Gas Engine Company, explains his 
firm's removal in the following words: 

"One of the main objects which caused us to move from San 
Francisco to Oakland was the fact that San Francisco was so 
overrun with agitators, walking delegates, etc., that it was im- 
possible to think of anything like industrial peace." 

O. H. Fischer, vice-president and general manager of the Union 
Gas Engine Company, signs a letter of which the following is 
an extract: 

"The chief reason which prompted our moving away from 
San Francisco was the fact that we expected to escape the un- 
satisfactory conditions that were beginning to be imposed by 
the local unions. . . 

"We were preceded by one of our competitors, the Hercules 
Gas Engine Company . . . and we were followed by the 
Standard and the Atlas Gas Engine companies." 

R. S. Moore, of the Moore & Scott Iron Works, thus explains 
the firm's situation: 

"The firm of Moore & Scott was formed in 1905, at which 
time it purchased the business of Marshutz & Cantrell, at Main 
and Howard streets, San Francisco, which firm made a specialty 
of logging engines and lumber supplies. 

"The new firm soon found that the logging engines, hoists, etc., 
used in the lumber camps were being manufactured in Portland 
and Seattle and sold at less than they could be manufactured for 



36 Union Labor in Peace and War 

in San Francisco. To make up for the loss of this business the 
firm purchased the shipbuilding yards of W. A. Boole & Sons, 
on Oakland harbor . . . 

"For your information the Fulton Iron Works, one of the oldest 
established firms in San Francisco, went out of business some 
years ago after having been operated at a loss for several years. 

"A few years ago the Risdon Iron & Locomotive Works, 
another old established firm, also liquidated, being unable to 
hold its own on account of competition elsewhere. 

"A few months ago the Keystone Boiler Works decided to 
quit, their business being taken over by another machine com- 
pany of this city." 

In addition Mr. Moore volunteered the information that in 
191 3 he declined to bid on a 4000- ton vessel because the closed 
shop made it impossible for the firm to compete with Los Angeles 
and Seattle builders running open shops. 

The census figures and manufacturers' statements do not make 
pleasant reading for San Francisco. Of course the labor union 
spokesmen vociferously deny that the demands and practices of 
trade unionism have anything whatsoever to do with San 
Francisco's former industrial stagnation and they shoulder the 
blame upon the greed of the land owners who raised prices to 
exorbitant levels. But this explanation does not account for the 
actual decrease in the number of wage earners between 1899 and 
1914, during a period when land values in Los Angeles, Portland, 
Seattle and Oakland grew far more rapidly than in San Francisco. 

While San Francisco stood still, all its rivals showed a tremen- 
dous industrial growth, soaring land values notwithstanding. 
San Francisco had more and cheaper electric power than Los 
Angeles, a richer, more varied trade territory than any other 
community on the coast; in financial resources it outstripped 
almost all its competitors combined; it was the oldest industrial 
center in the Far West, with trade connections established when 
its rivals were mere cow towns or sawmill camps, yet San Fran- 
cisco was not able to hold its own in the industrial race. 

Only two explanations are possible. Either the San Francisco 
manufacturers collectively were inferior in brains, business 
acumen and executive ability to their competitors, or else labor 
conditions brought about by the closed shop of the craft unions 
imposed upon them a production cost handicap which they were 
unable to overcome. 

Which explanation is the right one? 

Perhaps a few additional facts concerning union regulations 
will help the reader to determine the issue. 

Until a few years ago the press rooms of San Francisco's job 
printing plants were closed to all except union men. Like its 



Who Killed Cock Robin? 37 

London prototype, the pressfeeders' union stipulated that one 
feeder should be permanently attached to each press. If the 
feeder finished a run during the first morning hour, he stayed 
with his press even though it might take two or three hours be- 
fore the next job was ready for him; the union denied the em- 
ployer the right to shift the idle feeder to another task. 

An example of even more flagrant waste of time and effort is 
supplied by a rule of the typographical union which forbids news- 
papers the use of an electrotype advertisement unless the adver- 
tisement has been entirely reset. If, for instance, a firm causes an 
advertisement to be set and sends a stereotyper's matrix to each 
of the four San Francisco dailies for insertion, each paper is com- 
pelled to have the entire advertisement set anew in its composing 
room. Thereafter the matrix is cast and used; the type of this 
useless hand-set advertisement by-and-by is redistributed in the 
cases at additional expense. The whole transaction is on par with 
the famous operation of shifting a pile of bricks from one corner 
to the other and back again, except that the type shifter gets 
five dollars a day for his time. 

There are many more instances illustrating the efforts of many 
San Francisco unions to hamper and restrict production in order 
to "make" work for more men; the building trades especially 
abound in clear-cut examples — but that is another story. Just 
now I wish to reiterate the assertion that the closed shop and 
high cost of production need not necessarily go hand in hand. 
The closed shop means the exclusive employment of union mem- 
bers at union hours, wages and under conditions prescribed by the 
union. It is admitted that the percentage of highly skilled, 
first-class mechanics is far greater within most craft unions than 
outside of them. On account of this higher percentage of skill 
and efficiency it is therefore theoretically possible that a unionized 
plant should go below or at least equal the unit labor cost of the 
non-union or open-shop plant, notwithstanding its higher wages 
and shorter hours. It can be done, it should be done if the claims 
of trade unionism are based on fact, but in actual practice per- 
formance usually lags far behind the claims. Disregarding the 
element of competition entirely, the majority of the San Fran- 
cisco crafts still believe that it is the duty of every good union 
man not to "hog" the available work, to stretch it so as to give as 
many union members as possible a chance to work. 

This is not a mean spirit when it is pure; its roots reach to the 
spring of fraternity and altruism, but its stem produces queer 
blossoms. Where it prevails, the union defeats itself, constantly 
diminishes the number of its employed members so long as the 
unionized industry must compete with plants unhampered by 
union restrictions on the individual output. 



38 Union Labor in Peace and War 

Yet it is not necessary to do away with the unions, to throw the 
shop wide open, to stretch hours and trim wages in order to meet 
non-union competition. The union of the cotton operatives in 
Lancashire has conclusively demonstrated that plants run under 
strict union conditions, paying high wages for reasonable hours, 
can be brought to so high a state of efficiency that they can beat 
the world. But Ca' canny will never do it. 

Abnormal conditions have eliminated competition up and down 
the Pacific Coast, at least so far as the metal trades are concerned. 
Now open shop and closed shop are on a level, with the open shop 
offering the mechanic opportunities for higher earnings on piece 
work than the fixed time rate of the union plants. Employers are 
bidding against one another for labor of all kinds; the "marginal 
man" of the economist, the source of all labor's tribulations, has 
been turned into the "marginal employer." Now, in the hey- 
day of their greatest prosperity and power, is the chance of the 
unions in San Francisco, throughout the Far West to discard 
their traditional policy of hampering production, to take the lead 
in a movement for greater efficiency, to fortify themselves against 
the inevitable reaction by insisting that the union mechanic lead 
instead of lag in production. Now is the time to think not only 
of obtaining a fair share of the employer's extraordinary profits, 
but to plan for the future, to consider the period when the metal 
and shipbuilding trades slow down again, when the unions will 
be confronted by masses of men and women able to run auto- 
matic metal-working machinery as well and faster than the skilled 
all-round mechanic. Now is the time to get behind the barbed wire 
of individual efficiency, to abandon the ineffective mass-forma- 
tion tactics and allow the individual full opportunity for the dis- 
play of his best energy and skill at a living minimum rate fixed 
through collective bargaining. 

And now also is the time for the employer to remember that 
the extraordinary earnings of the best and fastest man furnish 
no excuse for slashing the rate all around; he must realize that he 
cannot maintain high efficiency by penalizing it; he must ever 
keep before him the fact that every hour's effort diminishes 
the worker's sole capital, his labor power, and that the compen- 
sation must provide not only for bare existence and brute 
reproduction, but for those things that enable man to lift him- 
self above the level of the work horse. 

For the moment the great war has lifted the curse of ruthless 
competition based on cheap and cheaper production from the 
world; every industrial nation is reorganizing on a new basis, is 
discovering new possibilities in the readjustment and coordina- 
tion of the relations between labor and capital. Will the unions 
and the employers of the Pacific Coast fall in line? 






CHAPTER IV 
WHAT CAN YOUR BOY DO? 

Let us assume the worst. Suppose you, kind friend, with a 
wife and two children dependent upon you, with the payments on 
the house and on the life insurance policy to meet, should be 
fired day after tomorrow. Suppose that you, without any 
cause except of pure economic origin, should see your job taken 
from you every six weeks or two months. Would you like it? 
Wouldn't you do everything in your power to nail that job down, 
to keep others out of it, to diminish if you could the number of 
candidates entering the lists against you for the work? 

Of course you would hang on with your teeth and keep com- 
petition away with both hands and both feet. A saint might 
fold his arms, roll his eyes to heaven and step aside, but the 
average man will fight for his bread, butter and lamb chops 
till the cows come home. Nor will he be extremely particular as 
to who gets hurt in the scramble and how. 

With these preliminary reflections upon a fundamental trait 
of human nature let us take a peek at the manner in which the 
San Francisco roofers protect their particular jobs. 

Local No. 25, International Brotherhood of Composition 
Roofers, Damp and Waterproof Workers, has a long name and 
a short membership. Once upon a time, when it carried a hun- 
dred and sixty names on its roll, the available amount of com- 
position roof, damp and waterproof work did not reach around, 
so the union "closed its charter," which means that it received 
no new members, which in turn means that an outside roofer 
coming to San Francisco would have to change his trade if he 
wanted to make a living, as no San Francisco contractor is allowed, 
on pain of strike and boycott, to employ any man not a member 
of Local No. 25. Well, the slump in building continued, roofing 
work was scarce and as a result many members of Local No. 25 
moved away or went into other trades until, so the contractors 
allege, the union had a membership of eighty men, and its charter 
was still closed. 

Furthermore, the roofers' union recognizes no apprentices. 
Its members are receiving six dollars for eight hours and they 
appreciate a good thing when they have it. But of course there 
are times when the union can't supply all the men needed on 
urgent work. In these emergencies it allows the contractor to 
employ unskilled helpers and these helpers are permitted to 
become union members after they have had one year's practical 
experience at the business. 



40 Union Labor in Peace and War 

Unfortunately there is a bug in this seemingly liberal provision. 
Suppose that during a rush period, when every union man is 
employed, contractor A is allowed by the union to put on two 
helpers; as soon as the union crew of contractor B has finished its 
job, the helpers of A must be fired and the union men put in 
their places. The master roofers state it is impossible to hold 
these helpers after they have been unceremoniously deprived of 
their jobs a few times, and that they rarely are able to work them 
consecutively longer than four or five weeks. Since the union 
requires a full year's work as a condition of admission, it follows 
that the graduation of a helper into a full-fledged member of 
Local No. 25 must be as rare an event as the election of William 
Jennings Bryan. 

Coming right down to cases, can you blame the members of 
Local No. 25 for their efforts to maintain a monopoly of all the 
roofing work in San Francisco? They are human, subject to the 
same temptations as you and I. The men believe that the work 
is theirs; they resent the coming of outsiders, just as the roofing 
contractors resent outside competition, just as the grocer and 
the butcher resent the opening of a new store in the same block. 
The only difference is that you and 1 and the grocer and the 
butcher can no more stop outside competition than we can hold 
back the tides. 

When this Chinese wall has been built high and strong and all 
around the job, it gives the worker a sense of security. He is 
safe from the wolf; let the hungry horde prowl around outside 
the wall as much as it pleases, he at least is well fed and snug so 
long as the supply within the encircling wall holds out. 

Besides engendering a feeling of security, this Chinese wall 
around the job at times creates something else, something 
different, entirely different. 

For a demonstration of the protected job's by-product, let us 
take a hasty glance at the organized plumbers. Their pay is six 
dollars for eight hours except Saturdays, when work stops at 
high noon while wages go on until 5 p. m. In San Francisco no 
plumber can work unless he is a member of the union. The union 
used to allow a few apprentices provided they were sons of 
plumbers, but now even the son of a union member has a hard 
time to learn his father's trade — at least in San Francisco. 
The apprentice list is full. A rank outsider has as much chance 
to break into the San Francisco plumbers' union as Morgan has 
of taking tea with the Kaiser. It can't be done. They have 
dugouts and bombproofs within the wall. 

To point out the result of the plumbers' fortified union position, 
a contractor relates how it cost him fifty-four dollars to have two 
pieces of five-inch pipe threaded and a valve put on. 



What Can Your Boy Do? 41 

The two length of pipe were at a building under construction. 
To thread them, it required the services of four plumbers at 
six dollars a day to load the pipe on a wagon. Under the union 
rules the four plumbers rode on the wagon to the machine shop, 
unloaded the precious pipe with their own "fair" hands, stood 
around taking the rest cure while the job of threading was 
under way, reloaded the pipe and conveyed it triumphantly 
back to the job, certain that no "unfair" hands had dese- 
crated the material. This process required a day and twenty- 
four dollars. 

The valve had to be put on by a steamfitter. The business 
agent of the plumbers' union insisted, however, that no common 
ordinary steamfitter should be allowed to perform the crowning 
ceremony of turning the water on. Only a plumber could ade- 
quately go through with this sacred rite. So for two days and 
a half the plumber drew seventy-five cents an hour waiting for 
the steamfitter to get through. When at last the valve was put 
on, the plumber solemnly tested it, picked up his tools and 
departed with the steamfitter. 

Well, why not? It isn't any worse than the typographical 
union, which insists that advertisements which have already 
appeared in last week's paper shall be set up, proofread and dis- 
tributed again today. It isn't any worse than the action of the 
employer who sweats his labor, who speeds his men to the limit 
of endurance and squeezes wages to the subsistence limit. They 
all do it because of the inherent selfishness of human nature; they 
take advantage of the other fellow because they have the power 
to do it, because the one who is injured takes the gaff and says 
nothing for fear of even greater injury. 

Selfishness, of course, lies at the bottom of the almost universal 
trade union practice of sharply limiting the number of appren- 
tices, except in so far as the entire apprenticeship system is a 
survival of the Middle Ages. A hundred and fifty or two hundred 
years ago the shoemaker remained a shoemaker until the end of 
his days. He might become a laborer, but he could not enter the 
gild of the weavers, nor could a blacksmith become a mason. It 
was against the law. The craft gilds, masters as well as men, 
were protected against outside competition, and this prerogative 
was handed down from father to son irrespective of fitness. Craft 
monopolies and trade monopolies were the warp and the woof of 
the social fabric, each monopoly recognized and protected by 
law. Naturally progress and advance were impossible under a 
system which killed incentive, so impossible that Adam Smith 
in his "Wealth of Nations" scathingly denounced the gild prac- 
tice of hereditary apprenticeship with its resultant monopoly 
wages and profits. 



42 Union Labor in Peace and War 

But the habit dies hard. A strict limitation of the number of 
apprentices is today one of the cardinal tenets of American trade 
unionism. If the American unions had the power generally to 
enforce their regulations throughout the United States, in 
fifteen years practically every one of the skilled trades would be 
so woefully short of mechanics that industrial expansion would 
be impossible. Also, conditions of this character would not only 
kill American export trade, but throw the home market wide 
open to foreign goods. 

Take the printers, for instance. In San Francisco the typo- 
graphical union permits the employment of one apprentice for 
every five journeymen printers in the smaller shops. Large shops, 
however, are restricted to a maximum of three youngsters, and 
even upon this limited number the union looks with disfavor. 
Furthermore, the average boss hires a journeyman to set type 
and objects if the journeyman "wastes his time" instructing an 
apprentice. 

The carpenters' union officially limits the number of appren- 
tices to one for every five journeymen; the machinists adhere to 
the same ratio; the ship caulkers do likewise. The bricklayers' 
union shows marked preference to the sons of bricklayers and, 
in order to keep the Chinese wall around its particular monopoly 
at the proper height, the by-laws of the San Francisco local state 
that no new member shall be admitted, even if he has the price, 
unless two-thirds of the union members present at the business 
meeting give their assent. I have not access to the minutes of 
the bricklayers' union, but it stands to reason that the members 
would have to be more than human if they did not cast their 
ballots in strict accord with what they consider their vital 
economic interest. That clause obviously was not put into the 
by-laws to make it easier for new members to join. A rush of 
volunteers is the last thing the bricklayers' union desires, a 
remark which applies with equal force to any other line of pro- 
ductive human endeavor, be it railroading or peanut peddling. 

It would be wearisome to recite in detail the exact limitations 
and restrictions placed by organized labor upon the number of 
apprentices; practically every union has such restrictions and 
does not hesitate to say so. They are frank about it. They want 
to keep the number of potential competitors for the job as low as 
possible. The boilermakers, the gas and electric-fixture hangers, 
the electricians, the structural-iron worker, the stone cutters, the 
tile layers, the plasterers, the lathers, the steamfitters, the ship- 
wrights and dozens of other organizations endeavor directly or 
indirectly to keep down the number of holes in the wall surround- 
ing their trades. They would like to bar apprentices entirely 
for a number of years as the plumbers' union and the carpet lay- 



What Can Your Boy Do? 43 

ers of San Francisco did, but few of them have the power thus 
openly to strengthen their monopoly. Instead they try to make 
the employment of apprentices unprofitable by fixing a rate of 
pay often so high that the learner, spoiling much material and 
many tools, becomes an expensive luxury rather than a source of 
profit to the employer. Once upon a time the indentured 
apprentice worked seven years for his keep and in addition paid 
cold cash for the right to learn a legally protected craft; nowadays 
organization, not the law, offers the obstruction, and the organ- 
ization makes the employer pay through the nose for the privilege 
of teaching his trade to growing boys. 

Seeing a future competitor in him, the average union mechanic 
cherishes no paternal affection for the apprentice; he does not put 
himself out to advise, guide or correct the boy. Neither is the 
employer, under present conditions, deeply interested in the 
progress and proficiency of the budding craftsman; he has to 
pay the apprentice when he spoils more than he can produce, 
and the union compels him to raise the boy's pay every six 
months. Nor has he much choice in the selection of applicants; 
he may fire a boy who shows himself to be totally unfitted for the 
trade, but as a rule the union will not allow him to take on a new 
boy in place of the unsuitable one. Since the union will not and 
the employer cannot guide the learner effectively, it follows that 
the apprentice is frequently running errands or a machine in- 
stead of learning the intricacies of the trade. 

Employers and union men both agree that the apprenticeship 
system in its present form is inadequate, unsatisfactory, pro- 
ductive of much friction and of mighty small results in all-around 
skill and efficiency. Both sides desire something different, but 
they are far apart in their ideas as to the proper solution of the 
difficulty. 

The general dissatisfaction with the apprentice system exists, 
but it is difficult to tell how sincerely either side desires a radical, 
thorough improvement in conditions. Between the two sides, 
each seeing only its own immediate and temporary advantage, 
the boy who desires to become a skilled mechanic has an ex- 
ceedingly hard time, and his difficulties increase in proportion 
to the strength and effectiveness of the trade unions. In com- 
munities where organized labor is weak the employer tries to 
obtain as much boy labor for as little money as he can and to 
hold this boy labor below men's wages as long as possible. In 
communities dominated by the unions, like San Francisco, a 
large part of the adolescent population is denied the right to a 
trade and driven either to casual employment in unskilled work 
or forced to leave the community. Even when the boy succeeds 
in dodging the union-made barrier, if he enrolls in an industrial 



44 Union Labor in Peace and War 

school and there obtains a thorough training in both the practice 
and the theory of a skilled trade, his troubles are not over. For 
years the graduates of the plumbing department of a San Fran- 
cisco trade school — not operated for profit — have been barred 
from employment in their home town by union regulations and 
have been forceed to go elsewhere in order to make a living. 

Boys who .had learned the difficult trade of the pattern maker 
in San Francisco were confronted by similar conditions. The 
pattern makers' union, anxious to protect its members' jobs, 
declined in any way to recognize the training given in trade 
schools. No matter how proficient the young man might be, he 
could not go to work in a San Francisco shop unless he started at 
the bottom of the ladder in company with the newest apprentice 
— if he got the chance. He might not. The pattern makers' 
union limits the number of apprentices to one for every five 
journeymen, and this restriction might force the trade-school 
graduate to wait for months and longer before he could find a 
chance to begin learning the trade all over again. 

The Smith-Hughes Act is now in operation. Under its pro- 
visions several million dollars of federal money are available 
each year to those states which will appropriate an equal amount 
for real vocational training. The means are now at hand to 
create at least the foundation for a new system of industrial 
education to take the place of the obsolete, inadequate appren- 
ticeship method. With the funds now available it will be possible 
to establish well equipped vocational schools with ample facilities 
to turn out skilled, all-around mechanics thoroughly familiar 
with the theory and practice of their craft; it will now be possible 
to establish courses alternating between factory and school, 
to coordinate the training given in either place, to give every 
ambitious boy a real chance to familiarize himself with the in- 
tricacies of every phase of his trade. 

The application of the funds available under this new law will, 
if wisely and efficiently expended and not used for the extension 
merely of the manual training courses, increase the number of 
skilled mechanics. Will the trade unions endeavor to dam this 
stream of potential competitors? Does the Smith-Hughes Act 
mean so heavy an increase in the number of skilled workers that 
the very existence of the labor unions is threatened? 

If the latter assumption is true, organized labor certainly 
would be justified in fighting to the last ditch against the appli- 
cation of the new educational law. Will it be necessary to make 
this fight? 

Which question brings us to a consideration of the purpose and 
effect of that trade union policy which expresses itself in the 
limitation of the number of apprentices, in the "closed charter," 



What Can Your Boy Do? 45 

in initiation fees running as high as seventy dollars, in short to 
organized labor's efforts at monopoly. What else are these 
restrictions, found in the constitution and the by-laws of almost 
every union, than an effort to monopolize the job? 

Is it possible to monopolize the work of any industry so as to 
give the union mechanics engaged therein the. maximum wages, 
the minimum hours and steady, continuous employment? 
Theoretically it is possible to bring about such a condition by 
complete organization of the craft, together with rigid limitation 
of apprentices and a hog-tight fence against new union members 
except via the apprenticeship route. Suppose every skilled craft 
in the country were completely organized and carried out the 
regulations described. We would than have reproduced one 
feature of the medieval gild system with all its sins of monopoly, 
stagnation and lack of progress; and outside this system we would 
have a vast army of boys, all of whom would either have to be- 
come merchants, professional men or day laborers. Yet the 
system here outlined is the nebulous ideal ever inciting American 
organized labor to fresh efforts to bring about its realization. 



CHAPTER V 
THE UNIONS' FAMILY FEUDS 

It is not the "closed shop" that arouses the ire of the average 
fair-minded employer. It's the abuse of the "closed shop," the 
endless, irritating succession of pin pricks caused by irksome, 
often stupid and always arbitrary union regulations that "get 
his goat," speaking in the vernacular. To illustrate: 

The unionized building mechanics of San Francisco will not 
handle "unfair" lumber. Unless it bears the stamp of the mill- 
men's union, they will not touch it. If they do, they are fined by 
the Building Trades' Council, and the fear of this fine is a most 
effective deterrent. 

A contractor building a structure against a time limit ordered 
two loads of lumber from a union mill. When it arrived on the 
job, the carpenters quit. All work came to a standstill because 
the lumber was without the union stamp. Though the contractor 
produced the bill, though he telephoned to the mill, though it 
was abundantly proven that the lumber was manufactured in a 
union shop, the mechanics declined to touch it. It had to be 
reloaded, hauled back to the mill, unloaded, stamped, reloaded a 
second time and hauled to the job again. 

The union millman had forgotten to stamp the material. It 
was clearly the union's fault, yet the union declined to pay for 
the extra expense or to compensate the contractor for the loss 
of valuable time. All it did was to pay for the hauling one way. 

This happened a few years ago, but the contractor still gets 
red in the face when he speaks of it. An instance trivial in itself 
has made of this man a lifelong opponent of the closed shop. 

It's the little things in life that aggravate, that set the teeth on 
edge and cause tempers to break. I have formed an intense per- 
sonal dislike of an acquaintance who roared with laughter when 
I had to chase my hat bowling along before a stiff breeze: some 
day I'm going to get even with him. Cast-iron toast has spoiled 
many a promising, sunshiny day and the stubborn collar button 
will be found at the bottom of many a divorce decree. In the 
industrial world the role of the collar button is played with great 
success by the jurisdictional disputes of the trade unions. The 
nature of this industrial irritant can best be shown by a few 
concrete examples. 

In refinishing an open-air cigar stand the contractor found that 
the job would not look well unless a pillar opposite the stand 
was ornamented with a marble base to match the base of the 



The Unions' Family Feuds 47 

cigar counter. He had his union carpenter take the measure- 
ments and sent over to a union shop for four small marble panels. 
The panels came with the holes drilled through them. Shortly- 
after them came the business agent of the marble workers' union. 
He caught the union carpenter in the act of fastening the first 
panel to the pillar and stopped him with the threat of a citation 
to appear before the Building Trades' Council. The operation 
of screwing the panel to the woodwork of the pillar was not car- 
penter's work. Under union regulations it had to be performed 
by a member of the marble worker's union who, under the rules 
of his union, had to have the assistance of a helper in the arduous 
task of driving eight screws — at a cost of at least fifty cents per 
screw. 

The same contractor was putting in a new store front. The tile 
in the entrance was laid by a member of the tile layers' union, but 
when this tile layer reached for a slab of marble three inches wide 
to lay it between the tiles and the edge of the sidewalk the busi- 
ness agent of the marble workers' union once more appeared on 
the scene. Afraid of a fine, the union tile layer notified his em- 
ployer that he could not put down the marble sill, whereupon the 
contractor came in person, mixed the cement, spread it and 
pressed the marble slab down into it, flush with the sidewalk, 
the entire operation requiring less than ten minutes. Of course 
the contractor's love for the union shop reached fever heat when 
the business agent protested against the work so vociferously 
that a crowd gathered to watch the fun; of course this contractor 
tries with all his might to perpetuate union conditions in his shop. 

While putting in new plate glass partitions the contractor 
found that two or three strips of patented metal molding, used 
to hold the glass in place, were not of the exact length necessary. 
A boy with a hack saw could have trimmed the molding to the 
required sizes in five minutes, but the cabinetmakers — all good 
union men — unanimously refused to tackle the job. It was a 
metal worker's task, they averred; if they undertook to do it, 
they would lay themselves wide open to a fine of twenty dollars. 
So the contractor had to send for a metal worker, who traveled 
six miles coming and going to spend five minutes in actual labor. 
The contractor paid the bill. 

Similarly the union glaziers insist that on interior work in 
which hardwood molding is used to hold plate glass in place, 
they and not the cabinetmakers or carpenters are entitled to the 
handling of the molding. In several instances the union glaziers 
have put the moldings on, only to have the union cabinetmakers 
do the work over again so as to have it right. 

It must not be inferred that the men themselves invariably 
insist upon the strict enforcement of these medieval rules, sur- 



48 Union Labor in Peace and War 

vival of an age when the functions of each craft gild were sharply 
and precisely delimited by law. The union mechanic has no 
desire needlessly to injure the employer upon whose prosperity 
the steadiness of his employment largely depends. But the 
union mechanic under the jurisdiction of the San Francisco 
Building Trades' Council is afraid; he knows that the ruling 
body of the Council is composed of the business agents whose 
jobs depend upon their ability to create as much work as possible 
for their constituents, to give incessant proof of their activity and 
watchfulness. No man likes to part with five, ten, twenty or 
fifty dollars for the violation of a rule even if the rule is foolish. 
Yet union men will incur the risk of a fine or the loss of the union 
card if they think they can hide their "crime" from the business 
agent's lynx eyes. A few months ago a San Francisco bank re- 
arranged its main office. The carpenters were perfectly able to 
unscrew the metal lattice work of the tellers' cages, to move it 
to the new location and screw it on again, but they were afraid 
to do it. They could move the wooden counters, but the moving 
of the lattice work "belonged" to the metal workers' union. 
Yet they did it — after the windows had been covered with a 
coat of whitewash to hide their evil doings from the business 
agent of the ornamental ironworkers' union. 

Years ago a fair amount of standard store and office fixtures 
was manufactured in San Francisco; today that line of industry 
is practically dead. No work is undertaken except special con- 
tract jobs. High wages did not kill the business; high wages and 
reasonable hours rarely kill any business. The instances quoted 
above supply the clue to the real cause of this industry's slow and 
painful demise. 

Some years ago most of the piles used in San Francisco bay 
were protected with a tar composition and covered with a felt 
paper held down by redwood battens, the work being done in a 
San Francisco plant employing fourteen to twenty laborers at 
$3.50 to #4 a day. It was only a small industry, so small that 
the unions overlooked it for quite a while. At last it occurred to 
the roofers', damp and waterproof workers' union that its juris- 
diction extended over this insignificant pile-treating trade. It 
asked for and obtained the jurisdiction. Fifteen union roofers 
at six dollars a day were to replace the fifteen non-union laborers. 
But the shifting of jobs did not take place. Instead the business of 
protecting submerged piles lifted itself by the boot straps and went 
in a body to the open-shop creosoting plants of Seattle. No union 
roofers obtained employment, but fifteen laborers found them- 
selves without jobs and the demand for redwood battens dwindled. 

Of course this is a small affair, too small to attract public 
notice except among the persons directly affected, but it illus- 



The Unions' Family Feuds t 49 

trates the tendency of all industry to go where costs are lowest. 
Because of this tendency the strongly unionized community 
must see its industrial development retarded or checked entirely, 
as in San Francisco before the war created abnormal conditions, 
unless union leaders and union men cooperate with the employers 
to offset the higher wages and shorter hours by greater efficiency. 
And the cause of efficiency is not aided by the efforts of rival 
unions to obtain for their members as much as possible of the 
work lying in the twilight zone between two crafts. The fight of 
the carpenters and the plasterers' unions over the nailing-up of 
the staff work during the construction of the San Francisco 
exposition supplies a classic example of the trouble, the cost and 
the friction created by the jurisdictional squabbles among the 
unions. 

A great many of the plaster ornaments were made on the bench. 
When this staff work was ready to be nailed in position, both the 
carpenters and the plasterers claimed the right to do the nailing. 
Though the contractors favored the carpenters, they agreed to a 
compromise under the provisions of which each craft was to do 
half the nailing. There were several reasons why the contractors 
favored the carpenters. In the first place, they received #4.50 
for eight hours, whereas the plasterers received $6; in the second 
place, the carpenter's familiarity with saw, hammer and nails 
enabled him to do a great deal more of the work than the plasterer 
could accomplish; in the third place, the union carpenters were 
perfectly willing to accept a common laborer earning $2.50 or 
#3 a day as a helper, whereas the rules of the plasterers' union 
required the services of a union hod carrier at #4 a day. 

During the period when each craft did half the nailing, by- 
standers used to await the change from carpenter to plasterer 
with intense interest. It was as good as a show. When the 
plasterer arrived on the scaffolding and found staff work ready to 
be placed, he beckoned to the hod carrier. The hod carrier 
gravely lowered the staff work to the ground, took it out of the 
sling, walked around it, put it back into the sling and hoisted it 
to the top of the scaffold again. The plasterer insisted upon this 
performance. His union was not on good terms with the hod- 
carriers' union. He wasn't going to be caught napping. The 
regulations of his union did not allow him to handle any material 
unless it was prepared by a union hod carrier. If he nailed up 
material hoisted to the scaffold by a carpenter's helper, he vio- 
lated the union "law" and might be fined. So he played safe 
and had the union hod carrier hoist the staff work down and up 
again before he would touch it. 

Unfortunately the fifty-fifty arrangement between the plas- 
terers and the carpenters did not last. The plasterers wanted it 



50 Union Labor in Peace and War 

all. They felt aggrieved and complained. Even to the annual 
convention of the American Federation of Labor did they carry 
their grievance, and when the court of last resort turned them 
down, they struck. Every union plasterer in San Francisco, in 
and out of the exposition, was ordered to quit work because of the 
dispute with the carpenters over the division of the task. 

Whereupon the labor world was shocked by a most strange 
phenomenon. 

The San Francisco Building Trades' Council, mainstay of 
organized labor in the Far West, actually and actively helped 
the contractors' association in the importation of strikebreakers 
to crush the rebellious plasterers' union. 

The strike was accompanied by the usual symptoms. Strike- 
breakers, even though they had the official support of the San 
Francisco unions, were slugged, beaten, sandbagged, kicked and 
chased off the jobs by the striking union plasterers. Only when 
the family feud threatened to disrupt the hiterto unbroken ranks 
of the Building Trades' Council was the dispute settled. 

The employers were not at fault. They were willing to and did 
fulfil every condition imposed by organized labor, yet they 
suffered because two unions did not have enough solidarity and 
common sense amicably to agree upon the division of work 
claimed by both. 

Before proceeding to the consideration of the broader aspect 
and consequences of jurisdictional disputes among rival labor 
organizations, let us tarry for a moment to take a look into the 
practices of the San Francisco roofers' union. 

The contractors allege that this union has "closed its charter," 
that is, it accepts no new members, be they with or without a 
union card; that it bars all apprentices; that it practices restric- 
tion of output even though journeymen are paid $6 and gang 
foremen #7.50 for eight hours. The employers complain further- 
more of a union rule which compels them to send out a foreman 
plus a journeyman on any repair job, even if the trouble is caused 
merely by a small leak which could be fixed in an hour by an 
apprentice. This roofers' union also is exceptionally particular 
when it comes to questions of jurisdiction. It will not allow 
the profane hands of non-members to desecrate any part of the 
material needed by union roofers. Its rules provide that none 
but roofers must hoist the material to the top. Thus, if a 
contractor desires to hoist roofing material to the top of a build- 
ing before removing the hoisting machinery, he cannot employ 
his union laborers for the work. He must call in union roofers 
at six dollars a day to perform the skilled labor of wheeling 
gravel, tar and roofing felt in and out of the hoist. Thus San 
Francisco roofs are exceptionally expensive, the dry climate not- 



The Unions' Family Feuds 51 

withstanding, and the relations between the roofing contractors 
and the union are fully as cordial and harmonious as the feeling 
Governor Hughes harbors for the glorious state of California. 

Sometimes the actions of the business agents show so little 
foresight, display such complete disregard of the inevitable 
consequences to the affected industries, to the union men 
themselves, that these actions appear to be childishly mischiev- 
ous. Take the case of the San Francisco sheet metal work- 
ers, for instance. 

Finding business slack, the owner of an establishment handling 
ornamental iron work cast about for a new line. He discovered 
that no steel lockers of any kind were manufactured in the Far 
West, investigated thoroughly, decided that he could compete 
with Eastern manufacturers, ordered automatic machines to 
stamp out the sides and doors and set out on a still hunt for 
orders. San Francisco was just completing a large new car barn. 
He put in a bid on the lockers and obtained the contract at #4.70, 
the next lowest bidder, an Eastern firm, asking #4.74 per locker. 
Competition was stiff, but the San Francisco man, having no 
freight on the manufactured product to pay, figured that his 
bid would enable him to make a small profit. 

He had figured without the unions. 

In the first place, the business agent of the structural iron 
workers came around and claimed the task of making the locker 
frames for the members of his union. The owner of the plant 
employed union housesmiths exclusively, paying them four 
dollars a day. They were fully competent to do the work, but 
because the angle irons of the frame exceeded a certain thickness, 
he was forced to hire structural ironworkers at six dollars. Nor 
could the door and sides of the lockers be made by his own men; 
they had been trained in the use of the automatic stamping 
machines, but they had to give way because the work "belonged" 
to the sheet metal workers' union who must receive five dollars 
and a half a day. 

Still, the worst was yet to come. When Eastern firms had 
shipped steel lockers, manufactured by workers not nearly as 
well paid as those in San Francisco, into the city by the Golden 
Gate, the assembling and setting-up of the lockers had always 
been done by unskilled laborers at a cost of 30 cents per locker. 
In his bid the San Francisco manufacturer had based his estimate 
on this assembling cost. But when he started to set up his lockers 
in the car barn, the business agent of the sheet metal workers' 
union objected. The work "belonged" to the union men. The 
manufacturer pointed out that unskilled laborers had for years 
assembled steel lockers shipped in from the East; why discrimin- 
ate against home industry? 



52 Union Labor in Peace and War 

Had the business agent been frank, he would have replied 
that the San Francisco Building Trades' Council had no earthly 
means to punish manufacturers in Ohio or Pennsylvania, but 
that it did have the power to make it exceedingly interesting for 
any San Francisco enterprise daring to disobey its mandate; he 
would have added that the boss had better quit arguing and put 
the sheet metal workers on the pay roll unless he'd like to see 
every man pulled out of his shop and all of his customers boy- 
cotted. But the business agent was not frank; rather he assured 
the manufacturer that the highly skilled, most efficient members 
of the sheet metal workers' union could do ever so much more and 
better work than mere laborers and that in the long run the 
employment of skilled union mechanics would turn out to be 
cheaper than common labor. 

Was it? 

With laborers it cost Eastern firms 30 cents to set up a steel 
locker in San Francisco; with union sheet metal mechanics it 
cost the San Francisco manufacturer 80 cents per locker. 

To keep the shop and his old employees busy, this manufac- 
turer bid on and obtained the contract for the construction of a 
steel raft. He was not allowed to build it; the shipbuilding unions 
claimed that the work was theirs and got it. 

He began the manufacture of a truck attachment with his old 
force, whereupon he was told that his men could not be employed 
on the work as it fell under the jurisdiction of the machinists' 
union. That was the last straw, the final pin prick, the blow that 
killed the golden-egg goose. The manufacturer broke with the 
unions, told the business agents to keep out and proceeded to run 
an open shop. Petty annoyances, stupid arbitrary handicaps 
blocking his efforts to keep his force employed literally drove him 
into it. 

Let us admit right here that perhaps the principal reason why 
this manufacturer objected against the pressure to employ the 
members of other unions was the fact that his own men worked 
under a union scale of wages lower than the pay of the other 
crafts. Yet his own men were fully competent to handle the 
work and more than willing to undertake it. All that was 
accomplished by the efforts of rival unions to crowd higher-priced 
mechanics into their places was a weakening of organized labor, 
the establishment of another open shop. 

On this point — it is assuming ever greater importance on the 
Pacific Coast owing to the rapid industrial expansion — Sydney and 
Beatrice Webb, the great English trade-union authorities, write: 

"If the employer, by any change of process, can bring his work 
within the capacity of operations of a lower grade of strength or 
skill, it is useless for the superior worker to resist the change." 



The Unions' Family Feuds 53 

Trouble over the division of work between rival crafts is of 
ancient origin. As early as 1395 the King of England had to 
interfere in a violent dispute between the London cobblers and 
"cordwainers" as to which trade should "clout old shoes 
and old bootes with new ledder upon the old soles, before or 
behind, " and since then the demarcation of trade limits has 
been a fruitful source of loss to both English employees and Eng- 
lish trade unions. Between 1890 and 1893 the great shipbuilding 
industry on the Tyne was several times brought to a complete 
standstill lasting months by jurisdictional disputes between the 
joiners and the shipwrights and the fitters and the plumbers, 
losses from which the affected unions did not fully recover for 
more than a decade. 

"The Engineers (machinists) have, on different occasions 
quarreled on this score with the Boilermakers, the Shipwrights, 
the Joiners, the Brassworkers, the Plumbers and the Tinplate 
Workers; the Boilermakers have had their own differences with 
the Shipwrights, the Smiths, the Drillers and the Chippers; 
the Shipwrights have fought with the Caulkers, the Boat and 
Barge Builders, the Mast and Blockmakers and the Joiners; 
the Joiners themselves have other quarrels with the Mill-sawyers, 
the Patternmakers, the Cabinetmakers, the Upholsterers and the 
French Polishers; whilst trades, such as the Hammermen, the 
Ship Painters and the 'Red Leaders' are at war all around. Hence 
an employer, bound to complete a job by a given date, may find 
one morning his whole establishment in confusion and the most 
important sections of his workmen 'on strike/ not because they 
object to any of the conditions of employment, but because they 
fancy that one trade has 'encroached' on the work of another. 
The supposed encroachment may consist of the most trivial 
detail." (From "Industrial Democracy," by Sydney and 
Beatrice Webb.) 

This condition of endless internal warfare, costly both to the 
employer and to the unions, has been transplanted bodily from 
England into the American "closed shop." It has irritated, 
annoyed, angered and injured more employers than the straight 
fights over hours and wages; it has weakened the unions, de- 
pleted their treasuries, aroused antagonism where cooperation 
was needed and has caused many times the loss in wages than the 
sum total of the work in dispute. It has done more than this. 
Perhaps more than any other factor jurisdictional disputes have 
enabled dishonest, crooked union officials to misuse their power, 
to blackmail employers, to transmute their official position into 
private gain. 

There was Sam Parks, business agent and boss of the New 
York housesmiths' and bridge builders' union. Sam Parks rules 



54 Union Labor in Peace and War 

the four thousand members of the union as though they were his 
serfs. He called strikes and called them off again, spent the union 
funds without consulting anyone; he gave no accounting, no 
reason or justification for his actions and, because he happened to 
come into power during a period when wages the world over 
were rising rapidly among organized and unorganized workers 
alike, he managed to keep himself in power by pointing to the 
increased wages as the result of his personal efforts. 

In 1901 Sam Parks spent $40,000 of the union's money without 
rendering an accounting; in 1902 more than $60,000 was paid 
out on his order in a similar manner, but these amounts con- 
stituted merely a part of the sums at his disposal. A typical 
instance of his working methods is supplied by the experience of 
the Hecla Iron Works. Parks approached the officers of the 
concern with a demand for money in one hand and the threat of a 
strike in the other. He was thrown out, whereupon he immedi- 
ately called a strike that threw twelve hundred men out of work 
and cost the concern fifty thousand dollars. The firm finally 
surrendered and paid Parks two thousand dollars, whereupon he 
ordered the men to go back to work. They went. At his com- 
mand, issued without consulting anyone, without a vote, without 
warning, they abandoned their work like obedient sheep, and 
like sheep they returned at his order. In dozens of instances the 
members of this union, obeying implicitly, without question, 
enabled Sam Parks to blackmail their employers, and the easiest, 
most common pretext on which to call a strike was the ever- 
present jurisdictional dispute. 

The Sam Parks affair is fifteen years old. How about con- 
ditions right now? 

In 1916 the C. A. Carson Company was erecting a building in 
Cleveland, Ohio. When it was time to pour the concrete on the 
first floor, trouble started. Three business agents descended 
upon the contractors. Union lathers were setting the metal 
forms for the concrete and the sheet metal workers claimed the 
task as theirs. It was not a question of hours or wages; full 
union conditions — the "closed shop" — prevailed on the job. To 
avoid trouble, the contractor declared his willingness to take 
down the forms put up by the lathers, to have the taking-down 
done by union sheet-metal workers or, if the lathers did it, to 
pay the cost into the treasury of the sheet metal workers' union. 

Did the business agents agree to this eminently fair proposition 
of a contractor anxious to avoid trouble? They did not. They 
refused to commit themselves, but when the contractor poured 
concrete into the forms placed by union lathers, a strike was 
called. Every union man employed on the building was ordered 
to quit and walked out. 



The Unions' Family Feuds 55 

The contractor alleges that the owner of the building settled 
the trouble by paying two business agents a total of two thousand 
dollars. When the first thousand was paid, according to the 
contractor's story, the union men meekly went back to work, 
regardless of the jurisdictional dispute. 

The John Gill & Sons Company put up a business structure in 
Cleveland late in 191 5. F. A. Collins, the firm's superintendent, 
under oath declared that shortly before Christmas union labor 
officials asked him to "kick in" on a Christmas present. He was 
giving fifty dollars for the grafters. They laughed at him. 

"My, that's only cigarette money for one day," declared one of 
them. They told the superintendent very frankly that they 
wanted at least two thousand dollars, one per cent of the contract 
price, according to the "union scale" they said prevailed in 
Chicago and New York. 

When the contractors refused to be held up, seven strikes were 
called on the building, the carpenters' strike lasting seven weeks. 
Hundreds of workmen, ignorant of the graft, obediently sacrificed 
many weeks' wages, construction was delayed, the cause of trade 
unionism was trampled into the mire that a few rogues and 
scoundrels might profit. 

Every one of these seven strikes was ostensibly based on a handy 
jurisdictional dispute. 

More than a dozen contractors testified before a jury that they 
had been blackmailed out of sums totaling #75,000 to settle 
strikes, called on account of jurisdictional disputes. Things in 
the Cleveland building trades became so bad in the spring of 
191 7, what with graft, internal scraps, broken agreements and 
incessant demands artificially stirred up by so-called labor leaders 
for their own private benefit that the employers became alarmed, 
took the bull by the horns and locked out practically every union 
man in the building trades. Two weeks later the Building 
Trades' Council through its representatives signed an agreement 
in which practically every demand of the employers was con- 
ceded. Twenty-four hours after this action, Charles Smith, 
business agent of the Building Trades' Council, was indicted on 
a charge of blackmail. He was tried and convicted by a jury in 
May. 

The sentiment in favor of the "open shop" — which always 
tends to become a strictly non-union shop — is growing rapidly. 
When peace comes, when the hundred of thousands of laborers 
now being rushed into the skilled and semi-skilled trades are 
laid off, forming a great reservoir of potential strikebreakers, the 
path of the unions will be hard and rocky. Right now is the time 
to remove the many senseless irritants that continually cause 
employers to curse the unions. Close to the head of the list 



56 Union Labor in Peace and War 

stands the jurisdictional dispute, the irritant par excellence, the 
handiest bludgeon of the grafting union official. In Cleveland 
the building trades' union have agreed under no circumstances 
to quit work on account of jurisdictional disputes; instead, they 
have agreed to submit the family quarrel to a permanent concilia- 
tion board whose decisions shall be final. 






CHAPTER VI 
THE UNION'S MAILED FIST 

A few months ago I called, unannounced, on a San Francisco 
manufacturer to discuss the labor problem in general and the 
limitation of apprentices by the union in particular. The moment 
the subject was broached Jones — that isn't his real name — arose, 
went to the open door leading into the shop and carefully closed it. 

"Now we can talk," he said, moving his chair closer and lower- 
ing his voice. 

During the discussion the union rule limiting the number of 
apprentices to one for every five journeymen was questioned. 

"I'll show it to you in black and white," he said. "I've got a 
copy of the constitution and by-laws right here." He rummaged 
through a number of drawers. "No, it's in the desk out in the 
shop. Wait just a moment. I'll get it for you." 

It took him five minutes to make the round trip, even though 
the distance was barely thirty feet. When he reached the old- 
fashioned bookkeeper's desk, he did not pick out the little book 
and return with it. He pretended to fill out a number of blank 
forms. Apparently failing to see the one he wanted, he hunted 
through the desk, removed the union book from its hiding place, 
glanced cautiously around, slipped it beneath the blanks, pre- 
tended to be busy a while longer, rolled up the papers with the 
book on the inside and came back. 

Once more he closed the door. Moving his chair alongside of 
mine he unrolled the papers between our knees, glanced around 
again apprehensively and, still holding the book at arm's length 
in such a position that it was completely hidden from view 
between our knees, opened it and triumphantly pointed out the 
particular by-law in question. 

This manufacturer took these elaborate precautions because 
he was afraid of the union men working for him. 

Why this fear? 

Before I had a chance to ask the question, the answer came. 

"We're going to move across the bay pretty soon," Jones 
explained. "The building is almost completed and a lot of auto- 
matic machinery is on the way. We're going to specialize on 
some big contracts that will keep the new plant busy till the end 
of nineteen eighteen without a single new order. No, we wouldn't 
try to do it over here. We need fifty more men and the union 
can't supply them. Even if union men were available, we'd 
have to pay the full union rate for feeding automatic machines, 



58 Union Labor in Peace and War 

for work that a man who has never seen a lathe or a drill press can 
learn in two months. We'll take our best mechanics along, pick 
up some good clean raw material in the country and build up an 
organization on the open-shop basis in the new plant." 

"Why don't you do it over here in San Francisco?" I asked. 

Jones shook his head vehemently. 

"It can't be done," he replied. "Too many alleys, little side 
streets and dark corners around here. Too many of our men 
would get beaten up. We are out in the open on the other side, 
away from the union crowd — and we get better police pro- 
tection." 

Because this manufacturer feared that the union would beat up 
and slug his men, because he feared that his employees on their 
way to and from work would be attacked and injured, because he 
expected that the authorities would fail to give him adequate 
protection should he operate on an open-shop basis, San Fran- 
cisco lost an establishment affording a livelihood to seventy-five 
workers and their families. Yet this manufacturer had no per- 
sonal experience with labor troubles in the citadel of American 
trade-unionism. He based his decision solely on the experience 
of others. 

Was his decision right? Do San Francisco labor unions really 
employ the blackjack, the gas pipe and the brass knuckle as an 
integral part of their armament in industrial disputes? 

Perhaps a few facts will throw a ray of light upon their prac- 
tices. 

The union press feeders employed in the San Francisco print- 
ing plants struck a few years ago, forcing the pressmen to go 
with them. Neither the pressmen not the press feeders were 
starving. The pressmen averaged better than #30 a week; the 
feeders received a minimum of $16 a week for work that could 
be performed as well and for less pay by boys and women. They 
had the eight-hour day. Wages, hours and conditions were at 
least as good as the best prevailing in the trade anywhere in the 
United States. The employers were entirely willing to concede 
the closed shop, to admit none but union members; they had no 
desire to precipitate a fight; they had no inclination to "bust the 
union." They had proven their willingness to give their press- 
room forces a square deal. Every printing plant worked under 
full union conditions and was entirely willing to continue work- 
ing under these conditions. 

Negotiations failing to bring about an agreement, the press 
feeders struck. Non-union men took their places. What hap- 
pened? 

Picket lines were established by the union in front of every 
plant. Non-union pressmen and feeders were assaulted, beaten, 



The Unions' Mailed Fist 



59 



slugged, kicked on their way to and from work, not in a few 
isolated instances but literally in scores of instances. Conditions 
grew so bad that the employers did not dare allow the non-union 
men to walk unguarded on the public streets. So they hired 
taxicabs and had them ride to and from work in state. Police- 
men were stationed at the plants mornings and evenings; police- 
men likewise were instructed to protect the non-union workers 
as they sprinted from the taxicabs into their homes. Even these 
precautions did not always prove effective. In broad daylight 




A victim of the "wrecking crew" 

on crowded business streets men who had taken the places of the 
strikers were caught as they left the automobiles, slugged, 
knocked down, kicked in the face and their ribs broken by the 
heels of their assailants. 

This private war was carried on by union labor not merely for 
a few weeks or a month. The slugging and kicking lasted for 
almost a year. More than a hundred cases of assault were 
recorded; more than three score of the victims required medical 
attendance; a dozen of them had to be taken to hospitals suffer- 
ing from fractured skulls, broken noses, internal injuries. And 
during these twelve months when the "wrecking crew" operated 
with sneering disregard of concealment only thirty arrests were 



6o Union Labor in Peace and War 

made, only five of the assailants were convicted. As to the 
punishment meted out to the convicted assailants, that is stiH 
another story. 

Remember, these assaults were totally unprovoked. The em- 
ploying printers did not hire armed guards or professional gun 
men; they did not evict starving strikers from company houses; 
they had not refused to recognize or deal with the union. On the 
contrary, they continued to operate strictly union shops except 
in the pressrooms. They were not trying to reduce wages or 
increase hours. The principal issue was the refusal of the press 
feeders to agree to arbitrate all disputes during the life of the 
proposed agreement, plus an attempt of the union to force more 
members than were actually needed onto the employers' payrolls. 

The private war levied by the press feeders' union against the 
San Francisco printing establishments lasted a year. Had the 
police department and the courts really tried to stop it, had 
swift punishment been meted out to men caught in the crime of 
assault, it would not have lasted a month. 

They are still talking in awed tones of the great San Francisco 
teamsters' strike sixteen years ago when the teamsters' union 
established a private jail in its headquarters, when steel bars 
were used to break the wrists of non-union men and pitched 
battles were fought in the streets. But it is not necessary to go 
back to the teamsters' or the car men's strikes for the red blos- 
soms of terrorism. In 1916 the stevedores and longshoremen 
struck. The Secretary of Labor at Washington, himself a union 
man, vigorously denounced the strike as a plain, unjustifiable 
violation of contract. The stevedores were not starving. They 
were receiving the highest wages paid for similar work anywhere 
in the world. They could not plead exploitation and hunger in 
justification of their tactics. They abolished municipal, state 
and federal law on the San Francisco waterfront and substituted 
their own rules. They put a complete stop to the movement of 
goods from and to the docks, raised a barrier so effective that 
the United States government had to have a "permit" from 
union officials to get its shipments through the picket lines. 

Fear, the fear of bodily injury, was the material out of which 
the barrier was built. Fear of blackjack, brass knuckles and gas 
pipe paralyzed the waterfront. After a few men trying to move 
needed goods from the docks had been beaten up, the strikers 
were, left in supreme control. They ruled the waterfront, made 
their own laws and enforced them. A thousand men terrorized 
a city of half a million — until the half million decided that things 
had gone far enough. 

The experience of San Francisco with violence in industrial 
disturbances is not extraordinary. On the contrary, it is typical 



The Unions' Mailed Fist 



61 



of occurrences throughout the country, only more so. The only 
difference between San Francisco and the rest of the country is 
psychological. From the earliest days San Francisco as a com- 
munity has displayed radical tendencies, has sympathized with 
the efforts of the worker to improve his lot and has translated 
this sympathy into action. The San Francisco employers have 
never been union haters; almost from the day of the city's birth 
they have been ready and willing to adjust wages, hours and con- 




For almost a year San Francisco master printers were obliged to carry their non- 
union employees back and forth in taxicabs, yet over a hundred of them were 
slugged and beaten by strikers and pickets 

ditions of work through collective bargaining. In any discussion 
of the tactics and methods of trade-unionism this fact should 
always be kept in mind. 

San Francisco did not have to pay the highest average wages in 
the country, did not have to concede the closed shop in almost 
every industry. Had the employers been so minded they could 
have broken the back of unionism with no greater effort than Los 
Angeles did. Had they been willing to fight for it as hard as did 
Portland and Seattle, they could have had the open shop with 
its lower wage scale and cheaper labor cost. But the San Fran- 
cisco employers did not choose to make the fight. They had the 



62 Union Labor in Peace and War 

wealth, the power and the backbone to crush trade-unionism, 
but they did not use it. Only when the demands of the unions 
became so extreme that the union leaders themselves opposed 
them did San Francisco capital strike back as in 1892 and in 
1901. Even then the employers did not continue the fight after 
the immediate ends had been gained. Had it not been for the 
liberal attitude of the employers and of the community as a 
whole union labor never could have reached the dominant posi- 
tion it has occupied for twenty years. A typical example of the 
attitude of San Francisco employers toward union labor is sup- 
plied by the Pacific Gas & Electric Company, whose labor policy 
has been guided for nearly a generation by the general manager, 
John A. Britton. 

The general manager thoroughly believed in the efficacy of the 
square deal. It never occurred to him to deny the right of the com- 
pany's employees to organize, nor did he ever refuse to negotiate 
with the representatives of the unions. During the period when 
the corporation was extending its service over the heart of central 
California, when one street-car, electric, gas or water system 
after the other was acquired, he never lifted a finger to stop the 
activities of the union organizers among the new employees. 
In the thirteen years preceding 1913 the hours of the corporation's 
artisans and mechanics were reduced twenty-five per cent and 
the wages increased more than fifty per cent without a single 
strike, solely by mutual agreement following negotiations. 

In 1913 the unions listened to the loud voices of professional 
malcontents. Instead of continuing the old policy of having 
each craft make a separate contract with the corporation, they 
organized a Light and Power Council with which all the unions 
concerned in the generation and distribution of electricity and 
gas became affiliated. Through this Council the individual 
unions carried on the negotiations for new agreements. 

An understanding concerning the contracts with the gas 
workers, the machinists, the boilermakers, the firemen and oilers 
was reached without difficulty. Only the electrical workers' 
union made trouble. It insisted upon two or three working rules 
which the company refused to concede, considering them arbi- 
trary, unreasonable and uncalled-for. A deadlock ensued, where- 
upon Manager Britton offered to submit the points in dispute 
with the electricians to a board of arbitration. The Council's 
representatives declined arbitration and, a few hours after the 
final conference, called a general strike of all the crafts to enforce 
the demands of the electricians. 

More than seventeen hundred men out of three thousand 
answered the call, but the company's 325,000 consumers barely 
knew that a strike was going on. The wise and liberal policy of 



The Unions' Mailed Fist 63 

the general manager brought its own reward. He had consist- 
ently filled the positions of responsibility in the office, the shops 
and the technical departments with the most promising men in 
the lower ranks, and these erstwhile privates, many of them for- 
mer union members, at once hauled out their overalls and kept 
the wheels turning. 

The corporation's labor record was clean. It had dealt fairly 
with the unions, had paid them the highest wages in the United 
States, had granted them the closed shop, had arrived at a com- 
plete understanding with all the unions among its employees 
except the electricians and it was willing to submit its differences 
with this trade to arbitration. This union of electricians, by the 
way, was an "outlaw" organization without affiliation with the 
American Federation of Labor. When it declined to arbitrate, 
the American Federation of Labor saw its chance, sent a represent- 
ative to confer with the company and signed an agreement to 
supply union electricians under union conditions. 

When this contract was signed, the unions of central California, 

£ ractically all of them affiliated with the American Federation of 
abor, proclaimed a boycott against the public-utility company 
and declared it to be "unfair" to organized labor, because it em- 
ployed union electricians supplied by the American Federation 
of Labor. 

The boycott, though, was merely a minor weapon. The plants 
of the company were picketed, assaults in force were made upon 
them by strikers, hundreds of employees were assailed and beaten, 
wires were cut, towers of transmission lines were dynamited. 
When the strike had finally run its course, the record showed that 
in 770 separate cases employees of the property of the company 
had been attacked, that 109 union members had been arrested 
and 42 out of them tried and convicted. It was during this 
strike that Thomas Mooney and Warren Billings, subsequently 
convicted of murder following the San Francisco bomb outrage, 
became extremely active although they had nothing whatever to 
do with the controversy. 

Even their fellow-workers do not escape the brass knuckle and 
the blackjack when the San Francisco unions strike. In 1914 
San Francisco Local No. 66 of the plasterers' union went on strike 
because the Building Trades' Council had decided against its 
contentions in a jurisdictional dispute with the capenters' union. 
So the Building Trades' Council organized a new plasterers' 
union known as Local No. 1 and freely issued cards to plasterers 
coming from other points. But the outlawed members of No. 66 
refused to recognize the validity of the new local's cards. On the 
contrary, they beat up and sent to the hospital as many of the 
members of No. 1 as they could reach, especially when the police 



6 4 



Union Labor in Peace and War 



officers detailed to protect the working plasterers were with- 
drawn by the city administration. Nor is this an isolated 
phenomenon. 

Warfare between rival unions is only too common for the wel- 
fare of industry and the spectacle of one set of good union men 
slugging another set also equipped with union cards, to the detri- 
ment of organized labor, of the employer and of the public, has 
been presented quite frequently. In fact when it comes to the 
census of broken noses, ribs and skulls, when the dead men are 
counted, when the property destroyed in industrial disputes 
during the last seven years is tabulated, it will be found that the 
old-line craft unions can give the I. W. W. cards, spades, big and 
little casino and still show a higher score. 

Yet public sympathy, at least in the beginning of a strike ac- 
companied by violence, almost invariably inclines toward the 
union's side. Concerning the attitude of the neutrals Secretary 
of War Newton D. Baker, having had ample opportunity to 
study the question while mayor of Cleveland, wrote two years 
ago: "The public sits by, blaming one side or the other on such 
half information or interests as it may have. . . . We do not 
like violence, but somehow this seems to us excusable violence, 
if it be not too violent. . . . Things are tided along without 
any clear aim or method and without any tribunal that can deter- 
mine the right and wrong of the questions involved, until somebody 
is killed or a serious riot threatens the destruction of property. Then 
public sentiment momentarily clarifies; we all agree that we do not 
want such things, no matter what happens, and the police now have 
a steadied sentiment to support them; the trouble is over. . . . 
The result, no matter what it is, rests upon no higher sanction than 
force, and therefore lacks stability and will last only until one side 
or the other feels strong enough to renew the struggle." 

The public sympathizes with the under dog. Employers who 
desire to have public sentiment on their side — does the employer 
who has no such desire deserve to win ? — will do well to take cog- 
nizance of this fundamental fact. 

Just now the world is learning, in a sea of blood and tears, that 
the use of force in the settlement of international disputes pro- 
duces death, chaos, famine, pestilence and dissolution. With the 
progress and spread of the war there is growing up a universal 
sentiment against the mailed fist, a cry for supernational machin- 
ery that will restrain the aggression of sovereign states and force 
them all to submit their grievances to boards of conciliation and 
arbitration. The age of Might is fast drawing to a close; Right 
is coming into its own. All the world is praying that the present 
war will be the last conflict of national interests to be settled by 
steel and dynamite. 



The Unions' Mailed Fist 65 

By the same token, the nation is growing weary of the private 
wars between trade unions and employers. Even in San Fran- 
cisco, the community with the widest and deepest sympathy for 
the objects and aims of trade-unionism, this impatience with 
violence, assaults and riots is making itself distinctly felt. Only 
a few months ago the voters of both San Francisco and Oakland, 
after prolonged discussion and debate, decided by their votes to 
prohibit picketing, the most prolific cause of violence in labor 
disputes. And at the beginning of the San Francisco street-car 
strike the public plainly showed its sympathy with the cause of 
the strikers; the public was entirely willing to put up with the 
inconvenience and wished the strikers success provided they 
would obey the law and refrain from violence. 

Neither the average union man nor the average employer 
welcomes strikes and riots; they realize that both sides invariably 
lose, that in nine cases out often the dispute is settled by negotia- 
tions which might as well have begun before the damage was 
done. Perhaps it is Utopian to hope and work for an end of war, 
be it private or international, but the goal surely is worth the 
effort. Nobody expects the millennium next year; on the other 
hand, nobody denies that present conditions need vast improve- 
ment. Improved relations between workers and employers can 
be brought about. Despite superficial appearances that indicate 
the contrary, San Francisco offers perhaps the most promising 
field in the United States for these improvements — if both sides 
will earnestly and sincerely make the effort, if they will both 
abide by the rules of conduct laid down by society for its own 
protection. 



CHAPTER VII 
THE STRIKER AND LOW JUSTICE 

In 1901 the San Francisco trade unionists were sore, physically 
and figuratively. A teamsters' strike was in progress and, when 
violence became "too violent/' to use Secretary of War Baker's 
words, Mayor James D. Phelan — he represents California in the 
Senate now — ordered a policeman to ride on each truck and to 
suppress the rioters with a firm hand. The officers did their 
duty. Order was restored through clubs wielded impartially and 
vigorously. Rubbing its numerous bumps, union labor resolved 
that it should not happen again. In the future the San Francisco 
policeman's night stick must be like the clubs in the movies; 
though looking effective, they must hurt nobody. So union labor 
went into politics. 

Abe Ruef, lawyer, politican and insurgent Republican, saw his 
chance. Putting casters under Eugene Schmitz, also a Republi- 
can, he wheeled him into the political arena as the union-labor 
candidate. Against the divided opposition Schmitz won; union 
labor plus disaffected Republican votes put him in. As mayor 
he appointed the members of the police commission who, in 
turn, appointed the chief of police who, of course, controlled the 
force down to the greenest patrolman from County Kerry. Since 
the police judges likewise had to keep their political fences in 
repair, the entire machinery of low justice looked to union labor 
as the ultimate boss. 

Twice Schmitz was reelected, the second time carrying the 
entire union-labor ticket, from dog catcher to the board of super- 
visors, to victory with him. After the interregnum caused by the 
graft prosecution P. H. McCarthy, president of the Building 
Trades' Council, filled the mayor's chair for four years and filled 
every available office, especially in the police department, with 
deserving union men. After the McCarthy dynasty came James 
Rolph, Junior, shipowner, fuel dealer and good fellow, for whom 
all classes voted with a sigh of relief, hoping to see in the execu- 
tive chair a man who would steer a straight course with the wel- 
fare of the entire community as his sole beacon light. However, 
Mayor Rolph almost from the beginning played the game of the 
labor unions more wholeheartedly, more thoroughly and faith- 
fully than either Schmitz or McCarthy, who were not compelled 
to give constant and substantial evidence of their devotion to the 
cause of organized labor. 

Mayor Rolph had ample support among the eighteen super- 
visors, the city's administrative body. One of them was a union 



The Striker and Low Justice 6y 

musician; another one was business agent of the carpenters' 
union; a third one was a member of the postal clerks' union; a 
fourth one was the molders' union delegate to the Central Labor 
Council; a fifth one had been secretary of the Labor Council; two 
others had belonged to the bricklayers' union. Seven of the eight- 
een were directly affiliated with the labor unions and eleven had 
received the union-labor endorsement. Hence the trade unions, 
working through the mayor and their very own supervisors, 
controlled the police department, controlled the police courts, 
controlled a dozen departments and commissions more completely 
than they had dominated them under Schmitz or McCarthy. 

What does labor-union control of the municipal machinery 
mean to the community as a whole? 

Disregarding entirely the distribution of the patronage pie 
among the faithful, a perquisite claimed by every faction, dis- 
regarding the neglect of schools in order to fatten the payrolls of 
the police and fire departments, disregarding the letting of con- 
tracts to firms in good standing with the unions irrespective of 
lower bids, features that have been too common in administra- 
tions of all complexions, let us confine this inquiry to the 
fundamentals, to the protection of life and limb, to the prosecu- 
tion and punishment of persons guilty of crime. 

The very basis of civilized society is the security of the individ- 
ual. Take away the security, and society at once reverts to the 
Dark Ages when the merchants had to pay tribute or travel 
under the protection of private armies, when private war flour- 
ished and every man's house had to be his castle. What the lack 
of an effective international police force, of a strong international 
tribunal of justice means is being demonstrated just now in the 
agony of a continent. To prevent such bloody chaos internally, 
society has everywhere built up an elaborate system of courts and 
peace officers charged with the duty of enforcing the law without 
fear or favor. 

It is significant that the labor unions seized the reins of munici- 
pal power in San Francisco primarily to be able to break the law 
without incurring its penalties. To put it baldly, they wanted 
control of the police department to the end that strikers might 
beat up non-strikers without having to fear the peace officers' 
clubs. They have had control of the police department for more 
than fifteen years now, and the record shows that they have 
made full use of this control. 

Look at the press feeders' strike in 1913. The employing 
printers had conceded the "closed shop;" the issue that brought 
on the strike was the refusal of the union to agree to compulsory 
arbitration during the life of the agreement, a condition readily 
accepted by their colleagues, the compositors. During the 



68 Union Labor in Peace and War 

eight months of this strike more than sixty non-union men were 
so badly beaten, kicked, slugged and stabbed that they required 
medical treatment; for eight months mobs of strikers chased 
the non-unionists, attacked and injured girls, broke into the homes 
of men who had remained at work, yet the police department 
barely stirred a hand and, when an arrest was made, the police 
judges either dismissed the defendant "for lack of evidence" or 
else, in case of conviction, imposed a small fine and suspended 
the sentence. 

The police did not hesitate, though, to enforce the law vigor- 
ously against non-unionists. When during the fourth month of 
the trouble a crowd of thirty strikers attacked three non-union 
pressmen, two of them got away. The third one was knocked to 
the ground, kicked in the face, trampled upon and struck. 
Believing that his end was near, he pulled a pistol and shot into 
the ground, whereupon the entire crowd took to its heels. 

At this juncture an officer appeared. And what did the police- 
man do? Did he chase the strikers? He did not. He arrested 
the bleeding victim, accusing him of discharging firearms within 
the city limits! Of course the police judge ordered his release 
immediately, you say. You are mistaken. The police judge 
held the injured man for trial; from week to week the case was 
continued until finally the union people consented to its dismissal. 

It is not necessary, however, to go back into history to study 
the results of union labor's political control As a warning to 
other cities to beware of the poison of "class-conscious" group 
domination, the things that befell San Francisco during the 
191 7 street-car strike, are well worth national attention. 

San Francisco's street cars are owned by three different in- 
terests. The bulk of the lines is operated by the United Rail- 
roads, a concern suffering from over-capitalization and from the 
sins of past managements. For several years the new manage- 
ment under the leadership of the president, J. W. Lilienthal, has 
been trying sincerely to rehabilitate the system and to remove 
the latent antagonism of the public. 

Most of the cable lines are owned by an independent local 
concern. They do not figure in the series of events under dis- 
cussion, but the municipally owned electric lines play a most 
important part in the story. 

The municipal system was acquired when the franchises of an 
important line expired. It is well built, has modern equipment 
of the highest class and gives excellent service. The platform 
men of the municipal lines are thoroughly organized. Mayor 
Rolph being a member of their union. As every platform man 
represents a vote, it has been the policy of the management to 
make room for as many good union men as possible by restrict- 



The Striker and Low Justice 69 

ing every employee to a work day of eight hours and to a six-day 
week, thus keeping many names on the payroll while rigidly 
limiting the men's earnings to #21 per week. 

The United Railroads paid a sliding scale of wages from 28 to 
37 cents an hour. The average rate was a little in excess of 33 
cents an hour. The regular men put in ten hours in eleven and 
were allowed to work seven days in the week if they so desired, 
though this "hogging" of a run was not encouraged by the 
management or the extra men. The wages paid by the United 
Railroads were the fourth highest in the country, being exceeded 
only by the municipal lines of San Francisco and the privately 
owned street car systems in Oakland, California, and Butte, 
Montana. According to the U. S. Department of Labor, only 
ten per cent of all the platform men in the United States are paid 
32 cents an hour or better, and the employees of the United 
Railroads exceeded this comparatively high rate. 

The 1700 platform men of the United Railroads have not been 
organized since 1907, when their union lost a strike after the men's 
leaders had declined to accept the findings of the arbitration 
board. 

Turning the controller bar, pushing the air-brake handle, 
ringing up nickels and punching tickets is not skilled labor. The 
average man with an average grammar-school education can learn 
the business at either end of the car in a few days, learn it suffi- 
ciently well to perform his duties acceptably, especially in a pinch. 
And there are always men in abundance who are anxious to find 
employment on street cars. It is sad but true that the world is 
full of untrained men making a precarious living through casual 
labor. Even if the pay were no higher, men of this stamp eagerly 
crowd into the street-car business because there is steady work 
three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, year in and year 
out. It's a life job once it is landed. In addition to the warm 
feeling of security, he can make better wages on the car platform, 
hour for hour, than he can in the open labor market. Hence the 
street car companies can obtain men when there is a scarcity of 
labor in almost every other line. During the early summer 
while farm and factory were vainly clamoring for help, from a 
hundred to a hundred and fifty applicants sought the five or six 
jobs that were filled by the United Railroads every Monday. 

Ever since 1907 the unorganized condition of the 1700 United 
Railroad employees has been as gall and wormwood to the San 
Francisco union leaders. In 1916 Thomas Mooney, a direct- 
actionist and prominent figure in the molders' union, tried to 
precipitate a car strike with the help of his wife, Rena Mooney, 
and a number of municipal-railroad men, but the attempt failed 
miserably. On August 11, 1917, approximately ten crews of the 



jo Union Labor in Peace and War 

United Railroads abandoned their cars, created a blockade, in- 
duced sixty or seventy others to quit and repaired to the Labor 
Temple where M. J. McGuire, business agent of the Boiler- 
makers' Union, of which Mayor Rolph is an honorary member, 
constituted himself their leader. 

They made no demands upon the company that day or the 
next or the next. They merely paraded from the Labor Temple 
down the principal business street once or twice a day, jeering 
at the men still working and calling to them to come out. At the 
end of a week approximately a thousand platform men had quit, 
many of them because they were afraid of bodily injury should 
they continue at work. More than 650 platform men refused to 
quit and kept at work right along though their lives were in 
danger every hour. No demands had as yet been presented, no 
union had been organized and hundreds of strikebreakers were on 
the way. 

Unofficially the men demanded the wages paid on the munic- 
ipal lines, $3 . 50 for eight hours' work or $2 1 a week. Of those that 
quit over four hundred had been earning $21 2. week and more. 

For almost a week, while the strike leaders believed that the 
company would be unable either to find substitutes or to raise 
the money for their importation, the cars ran without seiious 
molestation. But the moment the strike leaders realized that 
the disturbance had not bankrupted the company, that its 
directors had no inclination to sell the property to the city, thus 
increasing the number of places for good union men and depend- 
able voters, the instant the union chiefs saw that the strike was 
lost, violence began. 

Rioting, assaults, slugging, stoning, explosions and murder are 
the accompaniment of practically every street-car strike. Since 
the vacant places can be acceptably filled by unskilled labor, 
since unskilled labor in abundance is glad of the chance to get the 
coveted platform jobs, any street-car strike can be broken in 
ten days if the operating company is left alone. Hence the strikers 
invariably hurl bricks, grease the tracks, cut the wires, beat, slug 
and shoot in order to scare both the public and the new crews off 
the cars. It's an old story, but in San Francisco it had a new 
angle. 

When a dozen Seattle police officers refused to do their sworn 
duty and preserve order during the street-car strike, they were 
immediately suspended, their badges were taken up and charges 
were filed against them. In New York Mayor Mitchel told the 
striking car men that he sympathized with them, but that life 
limb and property would be protected at any cost. In San Fran- 
cisco Mayor Rolph praised the inactive police and accused the 
United Railroads of having caused the violence by importing 



The Striker and Low Justice 71 

men to run its cars, though the police records show not one un- 
provoked attack by a substitute car employee upon a striker. 

The mayor of San Francisco, elected to office with the help of 
union labor, head of the United Railroads' principal competitor, 
sounded the keynote; all the minor officials heard it and governed 
their actions accordingly. Even the daily press of San Francisco 
unanimously championed the cause of the strikers, echoed the 
mayor's cry against the imported substitutes and denounced the 
company for refusing arbitration. 

In this connection it is significant that M. J. McGuire, as 
leader of the striking platform men, again and again directed 
public attention to the refusal of the company to submit the issue 
to arbitration; as business agent of the striking Boilermakers' 
Union Mr. McGuire, however, in the same breath refused arbitra- 
tion even by the National Council of Defense on vitally urgent 
government war work as steadfastly as he demanded it for the 
street-car strikers. 

When violence began, when mobs stoned the cars irrespective 
of the injuries inflicted on women and children, when dozens of 
crews were slugged and beaten, the company demanded police 
protection and requested that an officer be detailed to ride on 
each car traversing the danger zones. This request was promptly 
and steadfastly refused because "the presence of police officers 
on the cars would influence the public and incite to violence," 
according to Mayor Rolph. But the mayor stated his unalter- 
able intention to enforce the law. Anyone found carrying con- 
cealed weapons would be arrested and prosecuted relentlessly. 

He kept his word. When the company sent out its cars, police 
officers were on hand to search the crews and the guards for "con- 
cealed weapons." Railroad employees by the score were arrested 
on this charge. It was not necessary that the "concealed 
weapon" be a revolver. Six men were arrested because they 
carried electricians' pliers; automobile loads of guards were 
arrested because pick handles and revolvers were found, not on 
their persons but in the automobile; motormen were arrested 
because they carried switch irons while turning switches. They 
were arrested on a charge of carrying concealed weapons even 
when they obeyed the rule of the company and took the con- 
troller bar with them as they stepped off the car. 

Yet there is on record not one single case of an unprovoked 
assault by a substitute upon a striker. 

Mayor Rolph would not allow members of the police force to ride 
on the cars; he sanctioned and encouraged the search of the rail- 
road's employees for "concealed weapons." What was the result ? 

I saw four police officers board a car while a mob of strikers 
looked on, search the crew and the guard for weapons and depart 



72 Union Labor in Peace and War 

with empty hands. Two blocks away the car was attacked, the 
assailants being encouraged by the positive knowledge that the 
car men could not defend themselves except with their bare fists. 

The guard and the conductor were sent to the hospital. Long 
after the slugging was over the police arrived on the scene. 

Motorman Sweeney, a veteran of the Civil War, seventy-one 
years old, declined to strike after a continuous service of many 
years. With seven hundred others he remained at work. He 
was attacked and beaten up twice by a gang of lusty young 
strikers. After the second assault he bought a revolver. The 
police promptly arrested him. He was found guilty by Police 
Judge Oppenheim and sentenced to six months in the county jail, 
though the sentence was suspended on account of Sweeney's age. 

On the night of August 23 a mob of strikers boarded a car, 
pulled the trolley pole off the wire, shot and killed the conductor, 
shot the motorman and two guards. After the excitement had 
died down, Motorman Edward C. Cecil was sent out to bring the 
bloody car into the barn. It was a night filled with bloodshed. 
Before going out, Cecil borrowed a revolver. When his task was 
finished and the murder car had returned, Cecil was arrested for 
carrying a concealed weapon. He was convicted. Police Judge 
Oppenheim, an appointee of Mayor Rolph, sentenced him to 
twenty-four hours in the city jail. 

From August 11 to September 17 more than 700 cases of assault 
occurred, more than 300 employees of the railroad were injured 
so badly that their wounds required surgical treatment. A 
dozen men sustained fractured skulls; others had noses, ribs and 
jaws broken; scores were knocked over the head, thrown down 
and kicked in the face. The percentage of casualties was far 
higher than on the Western front, yet the police, acting under 
Mayor Rolph's direction, denied them the right to carry even a 
pick handle for self-defense and had more than a hundred of them 
arrested on charges of carrying concealed weapons. 

In the police court two magistrates, Morris Oppenheim and 
Mathew Brady, both seeking reelection cooperated loyally with 
the mayor and the police in the effort to help the strikers win. 
It had been customary from time immemorial to require #50 bail 
on a charge of carrying concealed weapons. Oppenheim raised 
this bail to $1000, even in cases where the "weapon" consisted of 
a pair of pliers, a switch iron or a pick handle. Manuel Osuna, 
an old employee of the company, was given six months in the 
county jail because he carried a revolver. A guard employed 
by the railroad was given the same stiff* sentence on an identical 
charge. Neither had given the least cause of offense except to 
make use of the constitutional right of self-defense during a 
period when they were liable to be assailed by strikers. 



The Striker and Low Justice 



73 



But when the strikers came into court charged with an offense, 
their reception was totally different. Non-union men whose 
crime consisted in carrying a gun or a club were given six months 
in jail, but strikers who had sent bricks crashing through the car 
windows were released on their own recognizance; others, having 
been found guilty, were sentenced to jail terms not exceeding 
thirty days in length, but these sentences were suspended by 
Judges Oppenheim and Brady. 




After the bombardment. Car crews who carried clubs or pick handles for self- 
defense were arrested by the San Francisco police and charged with carrying con- 
cealed weapons 



It is well settled in law that the testimony of one eyewitness is 
sufficient for a conviction in a misdemeanor case. In the San 
Francisco police courts, this rule was disregarded. In case after 
case the defendant striker was discharged on account of "in- 
sufficient evidence" because the arresting police officer had failed 
to bring in corroborating witnesses. Whenever the defendant 
denied that he had thrown the brick or wielded the club, he was 
discharged unless the officer's testimony was supported by ad- 
ditional witnesses. The striker's word was given greater weight 
than the word of the officer. So flagrant was this condition that 
the strikers, realizing that they had nothing to fear from the 



74 Union Labor in Peace and War 

authorities, went on their slugging expeditions openly contemp- 
tuous of the law and its representatives. 

They were told by their leaders that they need have no fear. 
While these leaders in their public statements indignantly denied 
that the strikers were guilty of violence, in the privacy of the 
union meetings the men were exhorted to beat up the "scabs," 
were told to show more activity, to go out and "work" without 
fear of consequences, as the mayor, the police and the police 
courts were with them. 

Keeping in mind that two employees of the railroad were sen- 
tenced to long jail terms for carrying concealed weapons, here is 
what happened to one, Giometti, a strikebreaker, arrested on a 
similar charge and held for trial under a bond of #1000 furnished 
by the railroad. Becoming scared, Giometti quit and went over 
to the strikers, whereupon the railroad withdrew from his bond 
and surrendered the man into the custody of the police. Imme- 
diately the union leaders proceeded to bail him out. The charac- 
ter of his offense had not changed, but he no longer was a strike- 
breaker. As a good union man he could be trusted with a pistol, 
so his bail was reduced to #100 and eventually his case was dis- 
missed by Judge Oppenheim. Thus it was conclusively demon- 
strated to the strikers that they might with impunity commit 
offenses for which the non-union workers received six months in 
jail. 

Not to be outdone by other branches of the municipal adminis- 
tration, the Board of Health proceeded to assist the union forces 
to the best of its ability. When the strike had been in progress 
three weeks, a new state law regulating sanitary conditions in 
hotels and rooming houses went into effect. Mayor Rolph had 
denounced the strikebreakers housed in the various car barns as 
the scum of the earth, but the moment the new law became 
effective his health department took an extreme interest in the 
healthfulness of their surroundings, and prosecution of the rail- 
road was threatened unless it subdivided its dormitories so as to 
hold only twenty men each. The state labor commissioner, for- 
merly affiliated with the teamsters' union tried hard to prove that 
the state labor laws had been violated when the substitutes were 
brought to San Francisco; the United States marshal's office was 
induced to hunt for slackers among the substitutes; every avail- 
able official was mobilized to lend a hand in the attempt to drive 
the railroad to the wall. 

When numerous "wrecking crews" and "entertainment 
committees" of the strikers had become bold enough to commit 
murder Frederick J. Koster, chairman of the Law and Order 
Committee of the Chamber of Commerce, addressed Mayor 
Rolph and demanded that he, as executive head of the city ad- 






The Striker and Low Justice 75 

ministration, do his sworn duty and put an end to the unchecked 
violence. The Koster letter contained a hundred and eighty 
words. Mayor Rolph replied with a communication of a thou- 
sand words, most of them denouncing the Chamber of Commerce, 
blaming it for the "industrial unrest and class hatred," praising 
the police force and minimizing the importance of the rioting. 

"Doubtless you are disappointed because the police have not 
yet turned machine guns on crowds in our streets and killed a 
few dozen strikers including the customary number of innocent 
bystanders. . . . You still believe in Napoleon's whiff of 
grapeshot, ,, wrote the mayor, but the arrests of railroad em- 
ployees carrying pick handles continued and no policeman 
boarded a car except to search the crews for "concealed weapons." 
Day after day the union leaders continued publicly to denounce 
violence while the "wrecking crews" became so bold that they 
captured a substitute motorman and carried him to the Labor 
Temple, where he was rescued by the police. And day after day 
the public's sympathy for the cause of the strikers crumbled 
away until the entire city, the majority of the strikers included, 
was heartily sick of violence and its apologists. 

San Francisco's administration for fifteen years has been con- 
trolled by men who placed the selfish aims and objects of union 
labor ahead of the community's welfare. During this period 
the city officials from the mayor and the police department to 
the police courts, have consistently taken the side of organized 
labor in industrial disputes. Instead of enforcing the law with 
even-handed impartiality, violence was not suppressed, crimes 
by union men were condoned and the full severity of the law 
was applied only to non-union men. The employer of non-union 
help to all intents and purposes was an outlaw who could gain 
protection only through his own strength or by yielding to the 
demands of the union. Owing to this condition, San Francisco 
stood still industrially, even moved backward while every other 
Far Western city leaped ahead, and this retrograde movement 
was not arrested until the world war created abnormal con- 
ditions. 



CHAPTER VIII 
THE UNIONS AND DEMOCRACY 

Winning the war for democracy is, according to Lord North- 
cliffe, Sam Blythe and Lloyd George, a question of ships. It 
takes ships to transport a million American soldiers to France; 
it takes more ships to keep them supplied with guns, bullets, 
food, shoes, uniforms and powder once the men are over there. 
England has no ships to spare; France and Italy cannot supply 
their own needs; few neutral and Japanese ships are available 
and the losses exceed half a million tons a month. Hence the 
storm center of American war activity lies in the American 
shipyards. 

In September, 1917, eighteen unions of the San Francisco bay 
district, comprising all the men in the shipyards, struck for higher 
wages. Work on more than a hundred thousand tons of warships 
and freighters ceased totally; the country's second largest manu- 
facturers of airplane motors were compelled to shut down. In 
a hundred shops and factories the strike of the metal workers 
stilled the clamor of forge, anvil and lathe. Peace, deep, quiet 
peace reigned supreme. Not even the echo of the rumble of the 
Flanders guns was audible. 

Mind you, I am casting no aspersions on the motives of the 
strikers. They wanted more money for their product. For three 
years, while Schwab and others of their employers had been 
making millions out of the war, the Pacific Coast workers had 
lived up to their agreements and continued to labor under the old 
basic rate of pay. They knew that without them the profits of 
Schwab, of Skinner & Eddy, of Moore & Scott would stop 
abruptly. They merely struck for their share of the war pros- 
perity and in doing so they were no better and no worse than 
millions of their fellow-citizens who also raised the price of their 
products when they felt that they could get the money. The 
strike itself, spreading to the shipyards of the Portland and 
Puget Sound districts, has little significance in a period filled 
with strikes. The real significance lies in the manner in which 
the strike was temporarily settled. 

This strike of the Pacific Coast shipbuilders and metal workers 
was of really international importance. It had a direct bearing 
upon the duration of the war. The progress of the negotiations 
to halt it was watched by the entire country, by all of Europe, 
Australia and Japan. It affected the welfare of half the globe 
indirectly. In its direct effect it cut off the income of twenty 
thousand families. 



The Unions and Democracy jy 

The employers offered to compromise, to accept uncondition- 
ally any award the Federal Government might make. This 
offer was brusquely declined. A conciliation board appointed 
by the President proposed a temporary increase ranging from 
five to twenty per cent for all workers receiving less than six 
dollars a day, the final adjustment to be left to a federal commis- 
sion. The labor leaders submitted the offer to the membership 
of the eighteen unions composing the Iron Trades' Council. 
And so the voting on the question of going back to work began. 

The keystone of the arch was the union of the boilermakers, 
iron shipbuilders and helpers, with a total membership of 4,000 
led by M. J. McGuire, the business agent who found time to run 
the strike of the San Francisco street-car men in his spare 
moments. McGuire declared that the boilermakers would not 
go back to work until the demands of the street-car strikers had 
been granted. Nevertheless the unions proceeded to cast their 
ballots for or against returning to work. Everybody, from the 
President down, was profoundly interested in the result — except 
the boilermakers. 

The boilermakers did not care. Out of a total membership of 
4,000, all of them idle, with absolutely nothing to do except to 
vote, less than a thousand considered it worth while to cast their 
ballots. Three boilermakers out of every four stayed home and 
smoked their pipes while the greatest issue in the history of the 
organization was being decided. Three out of four did not 
consider the question worth busfare and an hour's idle time. 

Only 966 members of the union voted. Of these 463 expressed 
a desire to return to work; 503 voted to continue the strike. 
Forty votes kept twenty thousand men idle, tied up all work on 
destroyers, submarines, transports and airplane engines. 

Four days later the pressure of public sentiment forced the 
boilermakers' and shipbuilders' union to vote once again on the 
same issue. This time two-thirds of the members cast their 
ballots and decided by a large majority to go back to work. 

Do you get the point? Forty radical votes out of four thousand 
decided the momentous issue. Three out of every four members 
of the boilermakers' union took no more part in the management 
of the organization than they did in the coronation of the late 
emperor of China. Until they were almost kicked to the polls 
they allowed the radical officers and the small radical minority 
to run the affairs of the union without interference. By their 
apathy they furnished ocular proof of the fact that the present- 
day American trade union is not yet made wholly safe for 
democracy. 

The inclination to let George do it is an ancient fault of all 
democracies, and it is getting worse since the movies began to 



78 Union Labor in Peace and War 

offer a whole evening of thrills for a dime. Democracy is a good- 
natured, easy-going, pot-bellied sort of a fellow who wants to be 
let alone, who dodges trouble and habitually allows the life and 
fire insurance premiums to become overdue, habits and traits 
which make it easy to lead him around by the nose. The average 
citizen in a democracy is too preoccupied with his personal 
business to pay public business the attention it needs, hence 
public affairs are conducted by men who make it more or less 
their private business. The pension graft, the rivers-and- 
harbors pork barrel, the public-buildings steal, the extravagance, 
inefficiency and boodling in state, county and municipal adminis- 
tration are possible only because the average citizen is too busy 
or too indifferent to give to public affairs the time, the thought 
and the attention they need. Once a year or every two years he 
spends half an hour scanning the ballot; thereafter he marks it, 
hoping that the new set of office holders will do better than their 
predecessors, and proceeds to forget public business. It never 
occurs to him to go to the meetings of the city council, to watch 
the doings of the state legislature or to follow the record of his 
Congressman — unless he is in politics, in which case he ceases to 
be an average citizen. 

And in the meantime the Boss rewards the faithful, punishes 
the insurgents, distributes patronage, contracts, offices and 
favors — all paid for by the average citizen — where they will 
produce the maximum amount of good for the Boss. Knowing 
the apathy, the indifference, the sheep-like qualities of the aver- 
age citizen, the Boss builds up a machine which can deliver at all 
times a solid block of interested votes where they are most needed. 
The rest is easy. Unless the official's record is too infernally 
besmirched, the civic indifference and ignorance of the voting 
mass enable the Boss to keep his puppets in positions of power. 

The craft union began life as a simon-pure, all-wool democracy. 
Long before Oregon imported the initiative, the referendum and 
the recall from Switzerland, the trade unions had a complete 
set of these "tools of democracy" in daily use. Fifty and a 
hundred years ago the English trade unions submitted every 
problem to the vote of all the members; even the quantity of ale 
to be consumed by the union officials at the union's expense was 
decided by popular vote. But most of them shifted from popular 
to representative government. Pure democracy did not prove 
efficient. Like modern Russia, the English unions were 
always debating, always voting. And the voting was not always 
intelligent. Time and again the members through the initiative 
voted to pay themselves higher death, accident, sick and out-of- 
work benefits when the kitty was practically empty. Pure 
democracy nearly bankrupted the great national British unions, 



The Unions and Democracy 79 

clogged their administrative machinery and impaired their 
fighting efficiency. So they amended their constitutions and 
delegated the powers of the membership to representatives and 
officers. But they excluded politics so far as such an exclusion 
was possible. 

The modern English trade union combines the functions of a 
mutual insurance company with those of a labor organization. 
It collects and disburses enormous sums annually, but it does not 
fill its administration with political henchmen and job-seekers. 
The elected general officers have no chance to build up a machine 
by handing out plums to their friends and supporters. Candi- 
dates for positions must pass rigorous civil service examinations 
and once the best fitted have been selected competitively, they 
hold their jobs for life. 

Like its English prototype, the American trade union started 
out as an undiluted democracy and, in outward form, it has 
preserved this primitive democracy far better than the British 
organizations. The railway brotherhoods, the printers and many 
others still decide all important and many unimportant issues 
by a referendum vote of the entire membership; many unions 
impose a fine on every member who fails to cast his ballot on 
special propositions. All of them in their constitutions vest the 
supreme power in the body of the membership, but unfortunately 
this power too frequently is nominal only. Organized labor, 
especially the local unions and the district organizations, today 
is run by bosses and gangsters far more autocratically than the 
city of Philadelphia, for instance. 

And the principal, primary reason for this boss-ridden con- 
dition of the average trade union is the fear, apathy and indif- 
ference of the bulk of the membership. 

The sober, efficient mechanic with a steady job and a family 
to look after has no particular interest in union affairs. He rarely 
goes to the meetings. Squabbles about the wage scale and work- 
ing conditions do not bother him because a man of his kind 
usually earns more than the union scale and is held in high esteem 
by his employer. He has not the gift of fluent gab, he does not 
aspire to office; he does not hunt for trouble; if he suspects that 
there is something rotten in the union circle, he shrugs his shoul- 
ders and keeps away. Thousands of union meetings are held in 
the United States every week, but in few of them more than a 
quarter of the membership takes part, no matter how important 
the issue up for decision may be. 

As the example of the boilermakers' union shows, this refusal of 
the union members to do their democratic duty is far more 
pronounced than the indifference of the average citizen. Almost 
any kind of an election induces at least half the qualified voters 



80 Union Labor in Peace and War 

to go to the polls, whereas union issues are usually decided by 
less than a third of the membership unless the poll is taken by 
mail or at the places of employment. 

Ask your friend who belongs to the union whether this is true; 
if he is frank, he will unreservedly acknowledge this fundamental 
weakness of the labor organizations. 

What is the result? 

The small radical minority runs the union. The man without 
home ties, the disgruntled worker, the office seeker, the in- 
efficient mechanic constantly out of a job, the floater, the drifter 
and the silver-tongued orator who loves to hear himself talk, the 
man who would rather fight than eat and the scarlet revolu- 
tionary, they are on hand regularly when the gavel falls. They 
decide the union policy, strike the keynote, form a wheel within 
a wheel, make up the "wrecking crews" and "entertainment 
committees" and see to it that the Boss is kept in power and on 
the payroll. 

Ask any union man whether this picture is overdrawn. If he 
is frank, he will confess that he has not attended a union meeting 
in a month of Sundays. 

The man who rises from the ranks to union leadership must be a 
fighter, a diplomat, a politician, a consummate wire puller and a 
ready rough-and-tumble speaker. He leaps into the saddle by 
the sheer power of his personality. Once he is in the saddle, he 
uses every means known to the political boss to keep himself 
there, and the apathy of the average member makes his task 
fairly easy. With his supporters and partisans he prepares the 
slate and carries it through even if there is opposition, stuffing 
the ballot box if necessary. And he sees to it that every measure 
decided upon by the ring goes through. He is the dictator; his 
ukase prevails, the semblance of democratic procedure notwith- 
standing. 

There are unions having "chin men," scrappers who silence 
opposition by a blow on the point of the lower jaw. If the use 
of force is inexpedient, the meeting is held in a hall which will 
accommodate only a fraction of the membership — and the 
radical members are on hand early. If the hall is too large for 
this trick, the meeting is protracted by endless discussions of 
trivial details till long past midnight. The family man, the man 
who has to go to work at eight in the morning, yawns and 
departs. When the chairman judges that his supporters at last 
have a safe majority, the real business of the meeting is brought 
up and rushed through. 

As a rule, however, these drastic measures are not necessary 
because the union boss holds in his hand the power to take away 
the livelihood of almost every member, especially in those unions 



The Unions and Democracy 8i 

in which the period of employment is irregular. They have three 
choices: Obey, starve or go elsewhere. 

Suppose you are a first-class union carpenter, plumber or 
roofer going into a closed-shop community. You register at 
union headquarters. After a few days the secretary sends you 
to a job. The business agent does not like the color of your hair, 
the cut of your overalls or the drift of your talk. He intimates to 
the contractor that things will go more smoothly if he should 
lay you off. Out you go. You go to headquarters and complain. 
The secretary listens and glares, classing you as a trouble-maker 
and an undesirable citizen. No more jobs for you at union 
headquarters. You rustle a berth of your own. Pretty soon the 
business agent appears in the offing. What can the contractor 
do? You are nothing to him. Trouble with the union can ruin 
him. Out you go again and if you are wise, you give up the 
fight and go elsewhere. 

The power to give or deny employment, to play favorites, to 
save the good jobs for the "good" members and keep the unruly 
ones on the waiting list is one of the strongest weapons of many 
union officials. This does not mean that it is in universal use, 
but it lies at hand, ready for punishment or reward. Against its 
tyranny both worker and employer are alike helpless in closed- 
shop communities. So highly do certain union officials prize this 
weapon that in one case the employment bureau established by a 
San Francisco trade association was placed under the union ban. 
Any member registering in this bureau was threatened with a 
fine, thus keeping control over the opportunities to work in the 
hands of the union officials. 

Of course it would be foolish to assert that sinister motives 
alone caused the imposition of this fine. Every union man smells 
the blacklist, frequently with good reason, behind any employ- 
ment bureau established by an organization of employers, but 
this suspicion also helps unscrupulous union officials to keep the 
power of giving and withholding work in their own hands. 

Perhaps the finest example of autocracy in these United States 
is presented by the Building Trades' Council of San Francisco, 
P. H. McCarthy, Dictator and Czar. For almost two decades 
McCarthy, ex-mayor of San Francisco, has been doing plain and 
fancy dictating in three eight-hour shifts at the head of this 
remarkable organization. For nearly twenty years he has been 
the Building Trades' Council, cracking the whip and making the 
animals hop through the flaming hoops. Once upon a time he 
was an ordinary carpenter working for three and a half a day; 
now he is at the head of his cabinet, making probably ten 
thousand dollars a year and earning every penny of his salary, 
for under his reign his willing subjects have seen their wages go 



82 Union Labor in Peace and War 

up until they passed beyond the top of the scale paid the building 
trades anywhere in the United States. 

The Building Trades' Council consists of the delegates from the 
various member unions, these delegates being elected by popular 
vote. But — and this is a large, fat "but" — the Council has the 
right of veto. It can and does deny a seat to any delegate not 
acceptable to a majority of the delegates already seated. 
McCarthy carries this majority in his lower left vest pocket 
alongside of his watch. This majority is hand-picked, sun-cured, 
sized and graded, each specimen rubber-stamped with the 
initials P. H. M. None has come in without McCarthy's O. K.; 
none will come in unless the Czar has assurance that the delegate 
will stand without hitching, obey orders like a German soldier 
and follow the McCarthy banner without a question. 

If the House of Representatives were abolished, if the Senate 
were the sole legislative body and the Supreme Court in one, if 
no Senator could enter the portals of the Capitol without the 
President's approval; if the Senate thus dominated by the 
President could levy any taxes it saw fit; dispose of them as it 
saw fit, if it could order anybody and everybody to quit work and 
to go back, if it had a hand in fixing everybody's wages and hours 
and profits, if it wielded dictatorial economic as well as political 
power, wouldn't this country be the ideal refuge of Nick Romanoff 
and the Kaiser? 

Yet that is an exact replica of the autocratic power wielded by 
P. H. McCarthy as president of the San Francisco Building 
Trades' Council. 

It happens that the vast responsibility has changed McCarthy 
from a radical to a conservative, from a hot-headed brawler into a 
cautious, foresighted leader with whose rule both the mechanics 
and the employers seem fairly satisfied. He has used his power 
to make the unions under his sceptre live up to their agreements. 
He has gotten for them every concession he could wring out of 
the contractors, but when he saw that the demands were ex- 
cessive and would provoke a fight that might prove disastrous, 
he has counselled moderation. As mayor and as union official 
he has played the game for the exclusive benefit of the building 
trades, but he rarely overplayed his hand and he followed the 
rules whenever he could. 

Yet, admitting the best that is said of McCarthy, is it wise, is 
it democratic to place such limitless power in the hands of one 
man? Suppose Sam Parks were at the head of the Building 
Trades' Council? 

Sam Parks was a riveter by trade, a big, pugnacious fighter who 
made himself one of the four business agents of the Housesmiths' 
Union in New York and acquired as much autocratic power as 



The Unions and Democracy 



83 



McCarthy wields in San Francisco. Riding on the crest of the 
prosperity wave that began in 1898 he made the union believe 
that he personally was responsible for their increased wages, and 
thereafter he was Czar. Whatever internal opposition he en- 
countered was smashed by the fists and brass knuckles of his 
henchmen. He spent more than #150,000 of the union funds 
without an accounting. He levied blackmail on employers right 




P. H. McCarthy, ex-mayor of San Francisco, and Kaiser of the Building 

Trades' Council. He exemplifies the best type of benevolent autocrats 

among labor leaders 



and left, called strikes without consulting anybody and sent the 
men back to work like so many sheep. So strong was his hold 
upon the union that he was reelected after he had been indicted 
for blackmail, and his salary continued even after he had been 
convicted. Yea, his dupes placed him at the head of the Labor 
Day parade and decorated his horse with garlands of flowers 
when he was released on bail after he had been convicted, after 



I 



Union Labor in Peace and W/ 



In-, mimic, li.nl Ik in exposed so thoroughly that n<> doubt <>l his 
guilt remained 

I Ik powei and 1 h< greed, the autocratit sway <>i Carvill ol I he 
derrick men was second only to Sam Pinks' appetite. I 'mil Ik- 
collided with •'•< criminal law, Murphy <>i the stone cutten ran 

the Union With a high h.ind .ind i.m oil with /> .•'/,< •< >< » ol I Ik- union 

hind'. Only ' short while ago i \\ « » business agenta powerful in 

the ( lleveland building tradea were put into atripea foi bla< km.nl. 

I Ik \ , tOO| had called but "their" men .uid sent them back to 

work like docile sheep, rtiaking the contractoi pay foi "industrial 

leace " [n Chicago, 10 the reports nm, acarcity oi '.killed laboi 

iaa made oi laboi hl.ukm.nl .1 fine art| as profitable to the innei 

MM!' aa the choicest wai bride, and aigns are not wanting that 

elsewhere the price »>l pence is steadily climbing. 

Go loiiL among union men and induce them to talk Frankly, 
Among the rank and file few have confidence in the integrity of 
1 Ik 11 leaders Hiey shrug their .shoulders expressively and growl. 
What can they do? If they begin to question, to investigate, they 
:•< 1 into trouble: the insiders won't stand foi "monkey business 1 
.uid the cry oi traitor" silences the lone insurgent. H tfay go 
into union politics and try to oust the gang they believe crooked, 
the fight will surely weaken and may disrupt the organization, 
.1 catastrophe no union man will deliberately bring about, Yet 
the creed »>i the leadei may result in the same thing, as Hk- deck 
hands found out 

Henry Huntsman was the rulei ol the Hay •">*! Rivei Steam 
Immi Men's Union whose i<>m hundred odd members consisted 
largely ol Portuguese, Chilians and Sicilians, The union had the 
closed shop; onh its members could work on the thirty boats 
running OUt oi San Francisco I he business agent could come 
aboard, wake the men out <>i rheii sleep to collect the dues, tell 
them how much freight they might load on .1 truck and boss them 
as though ii« were running « I u boat All oi which he did, 

In May, 19161 a committee of the Huntsman union threatened 
(<> ( .ill .1 strike unless r ages were raised from $$o to $55 .1 month, 
Including £25 i<>i board and room plus the average amount oi 
overtime, these unskilled laborers were then earning the equiva 
lent ol $100 .1 month, .« fai greatei amount than they could pos 
sibh <»l>i mi in 1 he open mai ket 

I hough 1 1 1 < steamboat owners asked foi delay until theii 
.ii»i>Ih .11 ion i«»i highei freight rates could be decided, Huntsman 
orat red <Ik men out I hej went, lost the strike and came back 
as individuals Union members were not barred, but the secre 
t .11 \ no longei could collect dues aboard I he vessels 

In May. 101 . the owners voluntarily advanced wages #5 .1 
month \ week latei Huntsman called anothei strike, He 



The Unions and Democracy 85 

demanded that every employee be obliged to join the union and 
that the union officials be again given access to the boats, thus 
enabling the secretary to be at hand on pay day ready to collect 
the monthly dues of a dollar a head. When the demand was 
refused, all the men walked out, not because they were dissatisfied 
but because the union boss ordered them to quit. They were 
afraid of the consequences should they disobey. They are all 
back at work now. They are no longer afraid. But the union 
is gone to pieces, and gone with it is an income of four hundred 
dollars a month, killed by a boss who could not let well enough 
alone. 

Is there an immediate solution of the problem how to make the 
American trade union safe for democracy? I doubt it. The 
process takes time. The printers, the railroad men, the steam 
shovel operators, the cigar makers and a number of others have 
solved the problem of responsible leadership, especially in their 
national organizations, and they have solved it largely because 
of the higher level of intelligence among the rank and file. But 
it is different in the lower grades of labor. There the best solu- 
tion, to my mind, lies with the employer. If he can gain the con- 
fidence of his men, if he can prove to them that he can and will 
take better care of them than the union leaders, the power of the 
unscrupulous labor boss will be broken almost overnight. 



CHAPTER IX 
BOLSHEVIK] OF THE WEST 

\ heater hoy decided th.it he needed a rest. Having arrived 
.it tins decision, \\e slipped away, picked our .1 warm place be- 
tween two piles o( lumber and went to sleep for two hours. 
During his absence the riveter and the holder-on twiddled their 
thumbs, waiting for the red hot rivets that did not come. The 
totem. in was in .1 white rage. He demanded an explanation. The 
hoy grinned. 

"None of your damned business," he replied impudently. 
"1 got a right to stay away .is long .is 1 please.*' 

The foreman fired him on the spot. Within an hour every 
heater hoy in the plant had quit. A thousand riveters and 
helpers were idle. In two hours the culprit was back at work — 
and every heater hoy purred out his chest when the foreman 
passed. 

This incident occurred early in November, 11)17, in one o( the 
big shipyards of San Francisco hay. It is an incident typical o{' 
the spirit in which Far Western union labor at that time ap- 
proached the task of building ships for the government. It is 

a most significant incident. With the facts to be hereafter 

recited it shows that discipline m the industrial army was rapidly 
disintegrating. It indicates that the- same processes which turned 
Russia's military And manufacturing organizations into reckless, 
heedless mobs were likewise at work in the most important of the 
American arsenals, the shipyards. 

Here is the' companion piece of the heater-ben - episode. 

In September, 101 ", all of the employees o( a San Francisco 
factory struck in common with the metal trades. An assistant 
foreman, member oi' the machinists' union, noticed that there 
were scenes of loaded cars in the factory yard. lie knew that 
every freight car was needed to haul coal and war supplies, that 
perishable food materials were spoiling and factories shutting 
down because not enough cars could be had. As a patriotic 
duty he ottered te> unlo.nl those cars, but among the union men 

he- found no helpers, lie- fired the small yard locomotive, hooked 

Onto the cars, pushed them to the big electric traveling crane 
and single-handed, working fourteen to eighteen hours a day, 
lu< unloaded and released for the nation's use more than forty 
fuaght cars, lb* also enabled the* strikers to start work as soon 

as t lit \ returned. 

In I* ranee he would have been given the* . tor his 

devotion, In San Francisco he was cited to appear before a 



Bolshevik] of the West 87 

court composed of the officers and business agents of the machin- 
ists' union and accused of treason. When he asked them whether 
they placed the welfare of the union ahead of the country's need, 
they replied that his first duty was not to play the scab. Though 
he protested that he had done no machinists' work, he was found 
guilty, fined fifty dollars, assessed six months' dues and for- 
bidden to -zcork in any union machine shop within five hundred 
m lies of Sa n Fra n c isco . 

It sounds incredible, but every statement can be substantia ted. 
And this is but one minor occurrence in a mass of facts that throw 
a glaring light upon the uses to which the war needs of the nation 
were put by many of the Pacific Coast unions and their leaders. 

The cost of living has gone up enormously. In many lines the 
profits of the employers have been increased enormously. 
Common sense, patriotism and decency dictate that those who 
make the increased profits possible should be most generously 
compensated for their labor. If ethical considerations have no 
weight with the employer, then ordinary business acumen would 
compel him to offer the best possible wages and working con- 
ditions in order to retain his old men and attract new ones during 
a period when skilled and unskilled labor the world over is not to 
be had except at a premium. 

On the Pacific Coast, especially in the shipyards, this premium 
has been paid. The pay rolls show it. Youngsters in their teens 
with only a few months' training, are credited with ^20, #25 and 
#30 a week. Riveters have earned, on piece work and overtime, 
from ^60 to #100 a week at the old rates in force before the Federal 
Wage Adjustment Hoard recommended an increase of more than 
thirty per cent. These earnings and even higher ones no reason- 
able man will begrudge the workers. In this emergency, when 
cost is no object and maximum production is of supreme im- 
portance, no wage the employers can pay is too high if the 
worker will in return give the best that is in him. 

This he must do. The country demands it of him. The coun- 
try imperatively needs, absolutely must have, the highest pro- 
duction of iron and steel manufactures. Above all things, the 
country must have ships, ships of all sizes and materials turned 
out faster and in larger quantities than ever before. Even if the 
submarines should not sink another steamer, there will not be 
sufficient tonnage available to transport all of the million Ameri- 
can soldiers to Europe and to keep them properly supplied with 
food, ammunition and equipment. 

According to Captain A. F. Pillsbuiy, district head for the 
Shipping Board in San Francisco, the average output per riveting 
gang in the Union Iron Works was 359 rivets, counting hard ones 
and easy ones. This was in peace times. In the fall and winter 



88 Union Labor in Peace and War 

months of 191 7 scarcely a yard around San Francisco bay aver- 
aged better than 150 to 165 rivets per gang in eight hours. In 
other words, the yards were operating at an efficiency of about 
40 per cent. 

Part of this decreased efficiency was undoubtedly due to poor 
management, shortage of steel and equipment and to the intro- 
duction of large numbers of men unfamiliar with ship riveting, 
yet conscious, deliberate slacking and loafing on the job was 
responsible for a heavy percentage of the almost incredible 
decrease in efficiency. 

Every plate hanger, every holder-on, every shearer, planer, 
puncher and machinist was asked by the nation to exert himself 
in this emergency, to do more than his peace-time stint for his 
country and for the excess pay he received. 

Was he doing it? 

Was he\ 

This was the sjtuation on the Pacific Coast late in 1917: 
To turn out the minimum allotted amount of tonnage on schedule 
time, the yards would have to work in at least two eight-hour 
shifts. To reach their full capacity, three eight-hour shifts were 
necessary. In December they were working one shift of eight 
hours plus overtime, and they were short-handed even on this 
one shift. Thousands of men were needed to bring the gangs 
swarming over the hulls to full strength. 

It would seem that every individual engaged in shipbuilding 
would have sensed the emergency and responded to the need with 
every ounce of energy. It would seem that the boilermakers, 
more especially those engaged in riveting, would stretch them- 
selves to the limit in order to speed the completion of the hulls. 
The riveter is the man who actually puts the ship together, 
whose pneumatic hammer drives the steel rivets that hold plates 
and frame together. His work is highly paid, but not highly 
skilled. On straight shell work almost any able-bodied normal 
man can become a fair riveter with three months' practice. If 
the material is on hand, the speed of ship construction depends 
largely on the speed of the riveting gangs and this speed can be 
ascertained easily. The average stint of an average riveter on 
straight shell work is about 400 rivets a day; to exceed 500 rivets 
a day is not an unusual performance. Still, to be on the safe side, 
let us say that 300 rivets per day constitutes the average. Mind 
you, this figure is 25 per cent below standard. 

Taking the Pacific Coast shipyards as a whole, a small number 
of riveters will reach and surpass 400 rivets a day, but the bulk 
of the men did not stretch themselves at all. I doubt whether the 
average of all the yards combined, with the high record of the 
piece-rate workers included, would reach 200 rivets per day per 



i 



BOLSHEVIKI OF THE WEST 89 

gang in December, 191 7. In all probability it was nearer 150 
than 200 rivets. Accepting 300 rivets as a fair average and 
applying a similar ratio to all other processes, this means that if 
union labor would give merely a fair day's work for a fair day's 
pay the Pacific Coast yards could turn out a ship in less than two 
months when it then took more than three months. 

Lest this be considered an exaggeration, read what the em- 
ployers told the Federal Wage Adjustment Board in their brief 
filed in October, 191 7: 

"We desire to state that restriction of output is a very noticeable 
and glaring fault which we are struggling to overcome. We call 
your attention to the fact that this restriction of output runs 
through every trade in this district, and has enjoyed its greatest 
growth through an organized effort to bring about its accom- 
plishment. It is apparent to us that in many shops a careful 
record is kept either by memory or otherwise of the various 
particular pieces or parts which are supposed to require a certain 
amount of time to finish, and if a new man should through error 
attempt to do more than this he is very often called down and 
even fined if he persists in making such a grievous error as to give 
his best efforts to the firm he is working for. This plan is carried 
out by virtue of committee men in the shop, traveling represent- 
atives, or between the men themselves. Any workman who 
desires to make his own way to a better wage is positively ham- 
pered and discouraged from so doing and his only chance of 
recognition for satisfactory service is to be kept on the payroll 
during slack times longer than the poorer workman. In some 
cases this restriction is such that the workmen themselves notice 
the low day's production required of the particular job and even 
go so far as to state that they could readily turn out more work, 
but they are not allowed to do so by their organization." 

The employers substantiated their allegations by incontrovert- 
ible evidence so strong that the commissioners shook their heads 
in amazement and remarked, privately, that the condition of 
affairs in the shipyards was absolutely incredible. 

The boilermakers' union up and down the coast protested 
vociferously against the schedule of pay recommended by the 
Wage Adjustment Board, averring that the increase was not high 
enough to cover the rising cost of necessities. At the same time 
the boilermakers' union — which includes the riveters — also 
insisted vociferously upon a Saturday half-holiday, just as though 
the submarines were in the habit of going home for week-end 
parties. The Seattle boilermakers' union actually refused to 
work on four Saturday afternoons, tying up the shipyards until . 
forced to keep at work by outside pressure. Whether any real 
work was done on Saturday is a question which, in the light of 



90 Union Labor in Peace and War 

the riveters' capacity for loafing, may be safely answered in the 
negative. 

The Adjustment Board was told that the unions affiliated with 
the Iron Trades' Council of San Francisco insisted upon rigid 
adherence to their rules, the war notwithstanding. For example, 
if a welder was needed to repair a boiler, he could not do the work 
by himself. A union boilermaker had to be hired to sit and watch 
the welder work with his oxy-acetylene flame. By the same 
token, the steamfitters' union insisted that a member be present 
drawing pay and doing nothing except to discuss the war, while 
the welder repaired a steampipe. 

In England one of the first acts of the Lloyd-George ministry 
was to pass a law abolishing all rules, regulations and practices 
introduced by the British unions to hamper and restrict output. 
In the United States no such law has been passed. On the con- 
trary, all the protestations of Samuel Gompers notwithstanding, 
the unions tried, on the Pacific Coast at least, to use the general 
shortage of skilled labor to draw the lines tighter and tighter. 
Take a look at our old friends, the shipwrights' and caulkers' 
union, for example. 

Before the war this union was ossified. Owing to the decline 
of the wooden ship, few shipwrights and caulkers were needed 
and their organizations had a watertight, leakproof monopoly 
in the San Francisco district. No shipwright or caulker could 
work anywhere in the district unless he was a member of the 
union, and the union saw to it that the membership did not 
become excessively large. This union openly restricted the out- 
put of its members. Its by-laws provided that no union caulker 
could caulk more than 150 feet of deck or 100 feet of side seam 
of old work in eight hours. This restriction was not lifted, war 
or no war. Though the average caulker can easily do thirty per 
cent more than the union maximum, he was held down to his 
peace-time output even though he was receiving an ever-increas- 
ing war wage. 

Nor have other restrictive practices been abolished by this 
union. Among these practices is a rule which compels every 
shipyard to send to union headquarters when it needs caulkers 
and shipwrights. The other day the owner of an Oakland, 
California, yard shifted a crew of his caulkers to a vessel which 
needed a small amount of emergency work done in a hurry. The 
men had been steadily employed in his yard for a long time, but 
when he came to take them from the vessel back to their regular 
work, they declined. It was against the union rules. He must 
take them and their tools to union headquarters, hire them again 
and pay them for half a day. Argument was of no avail. The 
union rules had to be obeyed and the shipbuilder had to hire his 



BOLSHEVIKI OF THE WEST 



91 




This steamer was placed in drydock by union shipworkers, cut in two and 

abandoned because the owners refused to compel their deckhands to join 

the union 



old employees as though he had never seen them before, inciden- 
tally paying full time for the trip to and from union headquarters. 
It seems incredible that such union rules, no matter how well 
founded they may have been at some time in the distant past, 
should have been enforced^vigorously and to the letter, regardless 
of the delay and the friction caused, during a period when the 
industrial structure of the nation was trembling clear to the 
anchor blocks of the foundation with the excessive strain placed 
upon it. Yet it is only too true that union labor, the utterances 
of Samuel Gompers notwithstanding, was making use of the 
national emergency to demand twenty ounces of flesh instead of 



g2 Union Labor in Peace and War 

the pound and that, on the Pacific Coast at least, it would rather 
help the closed shop than democracy to win. Union labor for a 
time demonstrated on the Pacific Coast that it could be just as 
coldly, just as brutally, selfish as the worst of the buzzard crowd 
of profiteers who squeeze bloody dollars out of the misery of the 
warring nations. 

Here is a sample of union-labor war-time tactics: 

The Monticello Steamship Company runs a line of steamers 
between San Francisco and Vallejo, California. These steamers 
handle a goodly part of the freight and passenger traffic to and 
from the Navy Yard on Mare Island. In the summer of 1917, 
one of the concern's three steamers was placed in drydock to be 
lengthened. Union shipwrights went to work on the boat without 
hesitation, but when the vessel was cut in two and unfit for use, 
they suddenly picked up their tools and walked off*. Why? 

Because the Monticello Steamship Company employed non- 
union deckhands, though paying union wages and observing 
union hours. 

For ten years and more this concern had operated under full 
union, closed-shop conditions, paying the highest wages on the 
coast. Only when the exactions of the deckhands' union boss 
became intolerable did the concern, in common with other boat 
owners, show fight. As a result of this fight the union was dis- 
rupted; practically all the union deckhands, most of them 
Portuguese and Chileans, went to work under open-shop con- 
ditions at increased wages. Huntsman, the boss of the defunct 
union, could no longer compel the deckhands to pay a dollar a 
month dues. Labor leaders must help one another, of course. 
So it was arranged that the leaders of the ship workers' organiza- 
tion should put one of the concern's steamers out of business and 
keep it useless until the company would come to terms. 

The vessel was in drydock, cut in two, for many months. No 
union mechanic dared touch it, even though the Commandant 
of the Mare Island Navy Yard asked the Wage Adjustment 
Board to see that full traffic facilities were restored by having the 
steamer placed in commission. The Wage Adjustment Board 
sidestepped the issue by declaring that it was concerned only with 
work performed directly for the government. 

On this same grounds this federal board refused to take any 
action in the case of the wooden steamer "Trinidad," built in an 
open-shop yard at Eureka, California, and towed to the Union 
Iron Works at Alameda, on San Francisco bay, to have her 
engines installed. For many years wooden hulls have been built 
at non-union yards up and down the Pacific Coast and union 
mechanics in San Francisco have built and installed the engines 
without a word of protest, just as they have without a murmur 



BoLSHEVIKI OF THE WEST 



93 



repaired ships operated by non-union crews. The rank and file of 
union labor would have continued to work on any vessel at the 
present time, but the leaders saw in the war needs of the nation 
an opportunity to extend their power and to compel the union- 
ization of yards which they had been unable to organize through 
other means. So they proclaimed the doctrine that only "fair" 
vessels and "fair" materials could be handled in the San Francisco 
yards. 




These "unfair" boilers lay on the docks for weeks because the union boiler- 
makers refused to install them in the ships until government pressure 
compelled them to yield 



Mind you, in peace times this issue was never raised. Not until 
the emergency arose, not until the building of the largest number 
of ships in the shortest possible time became a task upon the 
completion of which the fate of many nations depended, not until 
the dispatch of a great American army to Europe was decided 
upon and the need of enormous amounts of tonnage became ap- 
parent, not until the shipworkers had the nation in a corner did 
their leaders decide that now was the time to press their advan- 
tage and establish a precedent. 



94 UnicTn Labor in Peace and War 

So the labor leaders, more especially M. J. McGuire and other 
officials of the boilermakers' union, placed the "unfair" steamer 
"Trinidad" under the ban, threatening any union man with a fine 
of fifty dollars if he dared work on the vessel. To them the 
necessities of the nation meant nothing — except a chance to 
extend their power. Also they placed the ban on eight Scotch 
boilers built by the Willamette Iron & Steel Company of Port- 
land, Oregon, for the Moore & Scott yards, where they were to be 
installed in four new freighters under construction for the govern- 
ment. The Portland concern refused to recognize the unions; 
though the Wage Adjustment Board found conditions and wages 
in the plant fully up to the standard of the unionized establish- 
ments, still the concern was "unfair to organized labor" and its 
output was boycotted. For weeks the boilers, some of them 
partly installed when the labor leaders issued the "unfair" 
order, lay on the docks or in the hulls without being touched. 
They would have been there until the end of the war and the 
return of the usual labor surplus if the government had not inter- 
vened. 

In this book it has been stated repeatedly that the employers 
of the San Francisco district never have fought the unions as such. 
They have been wise, liberal and broad-minded enough to realize 
that organization gives the individual worker a degree of pro- 
tection which he can obtain in no other way. Hence the employ- 
ers recognized the unions, conceded the "closed shop" and, being 
practically unorganized, yielded almost every demand. Without 
this attitude of the employers the unions could never have ob- 
tained their present stranglehold. 

This attitude of the employers, both in San Francisco and in 
Seattle, is changing rapidly now. The events of 1917 have 
proven to them that a continued absolute domination of the 
field by union labor will mean the speedy extinction of all large- 
scale manufacturing, particularly in the metal trades, as soon 
as competitive conditions return. They are fighting mad and 
helpless — at present. They have seen wages go up and the out- 
put come down; they have seen the business agents of the unions 
exercise so far-reaching a control in every shop that discipline and 
authority were crippled. They have seen the ship carpenters of 
the Union Iron Works strike for two weeks because too many 
house carpenters — all union men — were put to work building 
docks, ships and scaffolds, work which any carpenter can per- 
form. They have seen the unions violate their agreements by 
the "silent strike" in which the men quit one by one as individ- 
uals until the shop was empty, and they have had to give in, 
agreements notwithstanding. They have seen a country-wide 
shortage of skilled molders relieved in Eastern and Middle 



BOLSHEVIKI OF THE WEST 95 

Western open-shop plants by breaking in laborers to do the com- 
mon tasks of the trade which any intelligent man can learn in a 
few days, thus releasing the skilled molders for the really essential 
work. But in the closed-shop plants of the Pacific Coast the 
molders' union maintains a rigid monopoly; no laborer is allowed 
to touch any part of a molder's work; it must all be done by full- 
fledged union members. Every shop is desperately short of 
molders, but the union does not care so long as its monopoly is 
unimpaired. 

Organized labor now has the greatest chance in its history on 
the Pacific Coast. If it will prove that the closed shop means 
more and better work in return for higher wages — a basic maxi- 
mum wage of #4.80 was recommended for the Atlantic, a mini- 
mum wage of $5.25 for the Pacific Coast by the Federal Wage 
Adjustment Board before both coasts were placed on the same 
basis — it can so fortify itself, can bring about such close and 
cordial relations with the employers that its position will be 
unshakable in the future. If, on the other hand, it persists in 
raising wages and lowering the output, if it continues to hamper 
production with restrictive regulations, it will surely have to pay 
the accumulating score when war ends and surplus succeeds 
labor shortage, if not before. 



CHAPTER X 
SLACKERS IN THE WESTERN SHIPYARDS 

The Liberty Bond issues were oversubscribed on the Pacific 
Coast; the Red Cross, the Y. M. C. A. donations went "over the 
top" with a whoop; in voluntary enlistments the Pacific Coast 
beat the Atlantic seaboard. Meatless and wheatless days were 
universally and gladly observed. There was little grumbling 
about war taxes, and those who have been hit hard by war exigen- 
cies submitted without bitterness. But — 

In December, 1917, I presented in the pages of Sunset an 
array of facts concerning labor conditions in the Pacific Coast 
shipyards that brought forth indignant comment from every 
part of the country. It-seemed impossible that, during an un- 
precedented national emergency, organized labor in parts of the 
Pacific Coast should throw a monkey-wrench into the machinery, 
should demand higher wages than the shipyard workers in any 
other part of the country and, in return for these highest wages, 
deliberately retard the shipbuilding program by reducing the 
output to the lowest possible minimum. The facts than cited 
referred to the period before the strike of the shipyard and metal 
workers of the Pacific Coast in October, 1917. Since that time 
the shipyard workers have demanded and received wage increases 
aggregating 44 per cent of the old scale, but nevertheless reports 
persisted that the old "go slow" policy remained in full force. So 
I determined to find out for myself. 

I have never seen as many men with both hands in their pockets 
during working hours as I saw during a visit to the shipyards 
around San Francisco bay in the middle of January, A. D. 1918. 

On the perforated platform on which the small steel frames and 
bars are bent six men were busy, three clearing up things and 
three watching them. One of the latter three seemed to be the 
foreman. 

I counted nine men on the rough casting destined to be the 
huge stern post of a freighter. Five of the nine were working 
with their hands; the other four seemed to be entertaining them 
with their tongues. They were still engaged on this job when I 
passed by again fifteen minutes later, except that the black- 
smiths had lost and the jawsmiths gained one in number. 

Around a punching machine I counted three ordinary work- 
men punching holes into steel plates, with four experts — hands 
in pockets — earnestly criticizing their performance. Every 
other piece of machinery visible from the traffic lanes seemed to 



Slack! rs in the Westi-.kn Shipyards 97 

need the supervision of varying numbers of these experts, most 
of them of draft age. 

A splendid opportunity to stud] the West's sturdy manhood 
en masse ei en repos was afforded by the counters of the tool 

rooms. They seemed to he as popular as the ticket window of a 

movie palace, except that the- service was not ;is rapid. And half 
the population of the yards was either going to or coming from 

the tool rooms. On no other hypothesis could the immense 
traffic on every lane and runway between the piles of mate rial he 
explained. 

But there was no danger of being Swept oil one's feet. The 
various human streams moved with excessive deliberation. 
I timed one youth— of draft age whom 1 met alongside of a 

just completed freighter, its gun platforms towering high above 

how and stern. lie was carrying a rubber hose- with a brass 
faucet at one vnd. 1 he hose was six feet long and perhaps an 
inch in diameter, but the movements of the youth indicated that 
it must weigh at least a hundred and fifty pounds. He returned 
in eleven minutes. 1 walked to the tool shed in two minutes. 

Behind the new shop where- the- big steel plates are puncheel 

full of holes stands an array of lone, heavy tables. Traveling 

cranes deposit the hu^e- plates on these tables, workmen cover 
them with wooden pattern frames templates and proceed te> 
mark the location Or the rivet holes with a light hanmu-r and a 
small steel punch. The labor of inserting this steel punch into a 
tiny hole in the pattern and hitting it with a one-pound hammer 

must be extremely exhausting. Three out of every five young 
men — all of draft age engaged in this nerve-wracking task were 

resting when 1 saw them, so tire-d that they had to sit on or lean 

against the edges of the tables. 

A workman was inscribing upon each puncheel plate the- 
cabalistic numbers and symbols designating its location in the- 
ship-tO-be. He- eliel his WOrk with the- brush and the paint pot 
with painful deliberation. He labored with each number until 
it was absolutely perfect. And when the inscription at last was 
done, this artist painted >i neat blue line- all around the plate-, 

framing his time-consuming masterpieces so to speak. 

Down in the material yard 1 watched three- colored brethren 
move an angle bar five feet long and weighing about a hunelred 
pounds. The two in front carried between them a steel rod upon 
which rested the forward end of the bar; the- one- in the rear he-Id 
up his end without assistance. I watched the trio for quite a w hile-, 
unable to make up my mind. Did they or eliel they not move- ; 
At last, by watching the distance between them and a fixed object 
1 solved the- problem. TuiY DID m* >\ 1; ! forward thev came-, as 
steadily, as relentlessly, as the tide- rises, and with just about 



98 Union Labor in Peace and War 

the same speed. The only other gang I would care to back for 
the booby prize in a race with this trio was a crew engaged in 
trundling wheelbarrows loaded with coal. 

Yet candor compels me to admit seeing one grand burst of 
speed. It began at four thirty, ten minutes before closing time, 
when everywhere tools were dropped and coats brought forth. 
Before the echo of the whistle had died away, half the men were 
out of the gate and racing toward the street cars at a pace 
vividly contrasting with the gait on the other side of the fence. 

In the car I found a seat alongside of an intelligent looking 
chap. 

"Working over in the yard?" I inquired innocently. 

He grinned and nodded. "Been at it a year 'n a half now, 
steady." 

"Riveter?" 

"Hell, no! I'm a carpenter. Drawing down thirty-nine eighty 
a week, steady. Could get a lot more if I wanted to, but no over- 
time for this chicken. Eight hours, steady, is enough for any 
man." 

"The work is pretty hard, isn't it?" I suggested. 

"Not as hard by a damsight as building houses," he replied. 
"In times like these it's me for the easy pickin's." 

"I suppose they drive the men pretty hard in the shipyards," 
I ventured. 

"Drive 'em?" His tone suggested astonishment. "Say, if 
they wanted to get a day's work out of that bunch they'd have 
to have a foreman to watch every man, and then they couldn't 
do it. The only ones that ain't loafing are the riveters on piece 
work, the fellows that knock out eighty or a hundred a week, and 
they don't do all they can. Say, you go in a room on the inside 
of a hull almost any time and like as not you'll see six or eight of 
the straight-time riveters sitting around counting their money 
or swapping yarns. If the straw boss hollers at 'em, they just 
pick up and quit. There's dozens of places that'll take 'em and 
no questions asked. There's too much work nowadays for any- 
body to stand being hollered at." 

What was wrong with organized labor in the shipyards around 
San Francisco bay? Were the men underpaid? Had they just 
and righteous grievances? 

In September, 191 7, they were dissatisfied. Their basic wage 
rate, embodied in an agreement with the employers, had not been 
changed for two years. In these two years their cost of living 
and their employers' profits had gone up enormously. So the 
men struck. 

In November the Federal Wage Adjustment Board, after 
extended hearings all along the Pacific Coast, settled the strike 



Slackers in the Western Shipyards 99 

by granting the men an increase of 31 per cent, making the 
minimum base wage #5.25 instead of #4 for eight hours. But 
the San Francisco Iron Trades' Council was not satisfied with this 
award. From the Buffalo convention of the American Federation 
of Labor three of its representatives went to Washington, 
There, without giving the employers a chance to present their 
side of the case the Shipping Board granted the shipyard workers 
of the Pacific Coast engaged on government work an additional 
"war bonus" of 10 per cent, payable to every man who worked 
forty-eight hours a week, this bonus to be paid unconditionally 
and irrespective of the hours worked per week after February 1. 
The board granted this additional pay on the ground that the 
extraordinarily high wages would induce mechanics to come from 
the interior to the shipyards, thus increasing production. 

Did the bonus accomplish the desired result? 

This is what happened: In and around San Francisco all the 
metal workers affiliated with the Iron Trades' Council and not 
employed in the shipyards struck for the additional ten per cent 
in December. They brought to a complete standstill all work on 
airplane motors, gas engines, tractors, ship engines and other 
war contracts. Of course they got the ten per cent. What else 
could the employers do? And they got it unconditionally, so 
that the private shops were paying overtime based on a wage of 
$5.80 per eight hours, whereas the shipyards were computing 
their overtime pay on the basis of only $5.25. 

The result was that skilled mechanics left government ship work 
in order to obtain more overtime pay in the private establishments. 

Also, the metal workers' unions throughout the interior of the 
Far West, instead of allowing their members to depart posthaste 
for the shipyards, immediately demanded the same scale of pay. 
If the interior employers wanted to continue in business, they 
had to come through. They are paying the higher wage so that 
the expected influx of skilled mechanics to the coast shipyards is 
not materializing. 

But the effect of the last ten per cent increase has been even 
worse. It has lifted the remuneration of the shipyard and metal 
workers to such heights that the less fortunate workers in other 
lines became increasingly dissatisfied. It is not in human nature 
to bless the good fortune which is increasing the income of your 
neighbor #50 to #75 a month while your own income has risen 
only #15 a month. This general discontent cut down production 
and output in every line throughout the Far West. A few far- 
sighted employers, knowing the inevitable effect of discontent 
upon production, met the situation by increasing the wage scale 
voluntarily. Unfortunately many employers are not far-sighted 
or, if they are, they are not in a position to give increased wages 



ioo Union Labor in Peace and War 

unless all their competitors do likewise. Therefore production 
in all lines throughout the Far West remained below normal until 
the average level of wages throughout the West had gone up. 

As the result of these strikes and the wage board's decisions, the 
wages paid in the navy yards at Mare Island and Bremerton, and 
in the shipyards of the Atlantic Coast compared as follows in 
January, 1918: 

COMPARISON OF SHIPYARD WAGES 

Trade 
Acetylene Welders 
Boiler-makers 
Caulkers 
Drillers 
Electricians 
Machinists 
Molders 
Painters 
Pattern-makers 
Riveters 
Rivet Heaters 
Sheet Metal Workers 
Shipfitters 
Shipwrights 

Study this table a little while, especially the last column. It 
must be a poor mechanic who, with overtime at time and a half, 
can't bring home #3 5 to #50 at the end of every week. Also please 
remember that the Pacific Coast worker needs less fuel, less 
heavy clothing and underwear, fewer pairs of shoes, that he has a 
cheap and abundant supply of fresh vegetables and fruits the 
year around, that his rent, light, gas and food all cost him less 
than the snow-bound worker of the Atlantic Coast has to pay. 

Most assuredly the Pacific Coast metal workers did not receive 
higher wages because it costs them more to live. If wages were 
based on the cost of living, the western navy-yard workers would 
all have quit the big plants at Mare Island and Bremerton to 
seek employment in the private shipyards at higher wages. The 
very fact that they stayed proves conclusively that the navy-yard 
wages were ample to take care of the increased cost of living. 

Yet nobody, not even the stingiest employer, would begrudge 
these union mechanics these very high wages if the union workers 

♦Note. — The wages enumerated under the heading "Navy Yards" are the maximum rates 
for the best mechanics. The slower and less efficient men are placed in two lower grades with a 
minimum wage of $1.04 less per day than the maximum used in this table. 

fNoTB. — The rates here quoted constitute the minimum wage any union mechanic irre- 
spective of ability must receive. The navy yards pay straight wages for the first two hours' over- 
time. The private yards pay time and a half. 



^ 


Pacific Coast 


Atlantic 


Navy 


Private 


Coast 


Yards* 


Yardst 


$4.24 


#5-28 


$S.8o 


4.88 


5-28 


5-8o 


4.72 


6.48 


7-15 


3.84 


4.24 


4.62 


4.88 


5-28 


5. 80 


4.88 


5-28 


5. 80 


4.88 


5-28 


5. 80 


4.16 


5.04 


S-SO 


4.88 


6.48 


7-15 


4.4O 


5-28 


5.80 


2.24 


2.80 


3 46 


4.88 


6.00 


6.60 


4.88 


5.28 


5.80 


4.88 


6.00 


6.60 



Slackers in the Western Shipyards 



ioi 



had given an honest, full day's work for a full day's pay. Here 
are a few more instances of what was then going on: 

A house carpenter went to work in the yards. He was given the 
job of putting up brackets to support the ceiling in a boat ap- 
proaching completion. He put up three brackets the first morn- 
ing. At noon the shop steward of the union came, looked in and 
shook his head disapprovingly. 







An example of shipyard energy which unfortunately is not typical of conditions 



"Put up all those this morning?" he inquired. 

"Well, three ain't so very much for half a day," apologized the 
carpenter, "but I'll do better when I get used to the work." 

"Do better?" sneered the steward. "Say, if you put up another 
bracket today you'll get canned. Take a walk around, but don't 
forget that three is a day's work." 

Of another joiner working on the inside of a hull it is reported 
that he tore down in the afternoon that which he had put up in 



102 Union Labor in Peace and War 

the morning, thus managing to stretch a four days' job into 
seventeen. 

Circumstantial, detailed stories of riveting gangs snoozing 
peacefully during half the night shift are told by indignant 
workers. 

Surely low wages could not be blamed for the low output. On 
the contrary, the Pacific Coast was then going through an ex- 
perience similar to that which befell England in the first year 
of the war when doubled shipyard earnings caused the men to 
work only half the usual time. This disturbing effect of extra- 
ordinary wages was recognized by the Shipping Board when its 
members, yielding to the pressure of the unions, granted a second 
increase of ten per cent and made this increase a bonus payable 
only to men who worked eight hours a day and six days 
a week. Unfortunately the increase became unconditional in 
February. 

If wages, hours and conditions were more than satisfactory, 
what held back production in those days of stress? 

Perhaps I am mistaken, but as I analyze the situation, the 
principal cause of the abnormally low output, aside from shortage 
of steel, poor managefnent and inexperience, was to be found in 
the spirit and the methods of the organized iron-workers' leaders, 
a spirit which, through the radical minority in the rank and file, 
was able to permeate all the affected unions. 

These leaders, men like McGuire, Burton, Flaherty, Taylor, 
Atwood and others, had for years been directing the incessant 
trench warfare between their unions and the employers. It was 
their work. They got paid for keeping as many union men as 
possible employed at the highest possible wages, and to keep 
this maximum employed it was necessary that those on the pay- 
roll should not perform too much work. 

It is a fascinating and often remunerative game these union 
leaders are playing. It is the breath and the staff of their lives; 
in it they live, move and have their being. The union, what can 
be done with, for and through the union, fills their waking hours 
and limits their horizon. The more they can obtain for the union, 
the greater will be the members' loyalty and the reward of the 
leaders. Therefore the big, close-up fact of the union over- 
shadowed for a time even the bigger fact of the world war. 

In the organized iron trades of the Pacific Coast the radicals 
are in the saddle. They will listen to no compromise talk. Peace 
based on annexations and indemnities is their motto. They have 
the employers — and the country — at their mercy. It is their 
deliberate policy to keep on lifting up wages. This radical 
minority does not hesitate to use threats and intimidation to 
enforce its will. 



Slackers in the Western Shipyards 103 

It is only on the Pacific Coast that the unions in the metal 
trades dominate the field; in most of the eastern industrial 
centers the "open shop" prevails and restrictions of the Pacific 
Coast variety are practically unknown. To find a parallel case 
one must look to Great Britain during the first year of the war. 

Lloyd George ran full tilt into the elaborate structure of rules 
and regulations, all designed to keep the maximum number of 
union men employed, when the frantic call for more shells, more 
guns, more airplanes, more trucks, came from across the channel. 
By Act of Parliament, agreed to by all parties, the unions included, 
Lloyd George tore down at one sweep the entire union code and 
set production free. 

Had the British union rules and regulations remained in full 
force, it would have been utterly impossible to supply the guns, 
the shells, the ships, the trucks, the ammunition and the powder 
in sufficient quantities to save France. 

Around San Francisco bay many of the union rules and regu- 
lations, nearly all of them designed on the British model, are still 
in full force and effect. 

Idle pattern-makers are as scarce as gorillas in North Dakota. 
Every shop and shipyard clamors for more of them, yet in San 
Francisco the pattern-makers were not allowed to work over- 
time. A union rule forbade it. This rule states that overtime 
work is permissible only "for the preservation of life and prop- 
erty." Apparently this union believes that the country has gone 
to war to give a million American soldier boys a chance to have 
a gay time in Paris and London. 

"Dilution of labor" is a phrase constantly recurring in the 
reports of the British minister of munitions. It means 
that hundreds of thousands of women and unskilled men 
have been trained to do work which before the war was reserved 
exclusively for full-fledged union men. In the San Francisco 
district this dilution is not allowed by many craft unions. In 
the yards constructing wooden ships the shipwrights' union 
insists that every operation on the hull and the rigging be per- 
formed by skilled union mechanics. It requires no training at all 
to carry the thousands of wooden pins with which the planks are 
fastened to the frame from the place of manufacture to the hull, 
but the union insists that this carrying be done by mechanics 
receiving $6.80 a day. The driving of these pins is a simple oper- 
ation, so simple that any man can learn it in a few days. Skilled 
shipwrights able to do the difficult technical part of ship-con- 
struction cannot be found in sufficient numbers, yet in the San 
Francisco district green labor cannot be used to do the mechanical 
work of hitting wooden pins with a mallet, of nailing copper sheets 
to the hull. In the Pacific Northwest special men, most of them 



104 Union Labor in Peace and War 

graduates from the ranks of unskilled labor, perform these easy 
tasks, but in the San Francisco district none but full union ship- 
wrights may touch the material. They even tried to bar union 
house-carpenters from the shipyards in their effort to maintain 
a complete monopoly for the handful of union ship-carpenters, 
but P. H. McCarthy, head of the building trades' unions, smashed 
through the wall and obtained a free field for his men. 

Ship-carpenters received #6.60 for eight hours and double pay 
for overtime. The special men employed in the northwestern 
yards to drive the pins and do other work requiring practically 
no training earned #4.50 a day, but the San Francisco unions 
barred them. It follows that the wooden-ship builder of San 
Francisco is penalized by higher labor costs. Hence the wooden- 
ship industry has made little progress in the San Francisco dis- 
tricts, while its growth in Oregon and Washington has been 
enormous. 

This is a war of shop against shop, of factory against factory. 
The man in the shop at home is fully as important as the man in 
the European trenches, but the fighter in the shop risks neither 
life, limb nor comfort for thirty dollars a month. To win the 
war, both the soldier abroad and the worker at home must put 
forth their best efforts. A disorganized, sullen, mutinous army 
cannot win, whether this army be at the front or in the factories. 
If the employer is at fault, take the plant away from him. If 
short-sighted labor-leaders stand in the way, push them aside. 
No one must be allowed to interfere with production while the 
war lasts. 



CHAPTER XI 
WAGES AND OUTPUT 

He graduated from a Seattle high school and went to work in a 
big office, beginning humbly 'way down at the bottom. His 
"salary" was five dollars a week. Within a few months he be- 
came restless. Every youngster of his acquaintance was sport- 
ing grimy hands, forty-dollar suits and a motorcycle. When one 
of them was pinched for speeding and fined twenty-five dollars, 
the boy peeled the bills from a fat roll, handed them over and 
walked out, grinning. The fine didn't worry him. He was 
working in the shipyards. 

So at last the boy in the office also took the plunge. He applied 
for a job at a yard, and, being husky, was put to work. The first 
day in the yards he earned nearly his full week's office "salary." 

In Tacoma a father and two sons are working in the shipyards. 
For a year their combined wages have reached a thousand dollars 
a month 

Caulkers working on wooden ships for a long time pocketed 
twelve dollars a day and seventeen dollars on Sunday. It's a 
mighty poor kid of eighteen who can't bring home ninety or a 
hundred a month and the mechanic who, with overtime and holi- 
day trimmings, can't run his pay envelope up to forty-five or 
fifty dollars a week is lacking in ambition. All the elevator 
"boys" around Puget Sound wear skirts, the jewelry stores are 
doing a remarkable business, the furniture houses can't keep up 
with the demand and scores of automobiles are lined up day and 
night in front of the shipyards for their owners in overalls. Also 
at noon the gates are infested with agents, five and ten at a time 
having brand new machines with them. They sell them, too. 
One skilled steel worker earning twenty-five dollars a day pur- 
chased and kept three cars in a year — and was put out of the 
house he bought on instalments because he did not keep up his 
payments. Yet the bank deposits are growing and the Puget 
Sound Liberty Bond subscriptions barely lowered the savings 
reservoir an inch or two. 

Beyond all question the shipbuilding boom has brought un- 
exampled prosperity to Seattle, a prosperity which, thank God, 
is percolating most freely through the ranks of the wage earners, 
so freely that hundreds of able-bodied college graduates, teachers, 
budding lawyers and doctors have abandoned their lean, white- 
collared dignity for the opulent overalls. 

For the whipped cream on this prosperity pie the workers owe 
thanks to the shipbuilding firm of Skinner & Eddy, more espe- 



106 Union Labor in Peace and War 

cially to D. E. Skinner, presiding genius of the concern, promoter, 
financier and lumberman. He applied the match that set off the 
skyrocket of rising wages. His policy brought about the intro- 
duction of the six-dollar-a-day wage scale in the Puget Sound 
shipyards and shops. From Puget Sound this wage scale spread 
all along the Pacific Coast, jumped clear across the continent 
to the Atlantic shipyards. 

Late in 191 5 D. E. Skinner, watching the growth of the sub- 
marine depredations, noticing the tremendous demand for 
tonnage, began to scent the shipbuilding boom and determined 
to get in on the ground floor. British and Norwegian orders were 
swamping the established yards; all the old hulks had left their 
cozy beds on the mud flats and were making fortunes for their 
owners; every week marine freight rates and tonnage values 
advanced another notch. Down in San Francisco Mayor James 
H. Rolph had made a painless million merely by signing contracts 
for the construction of new ships which he sold at a profit before 
they were completed. There was big money in the ship- 
building business for the man with capital and courage. Skinner 
had both. 

To establish a shipyard three elements were needed: a site on 
tidewater, sufficient raw material and, above all things, an organi- 
zation of skilled and experienced men. It was easy to get the site. 
Steel at that time was still to be had at reasonable prices and it is 
reported that the Skinner & Eddy yard contracted for large 
amounts at comparatively low figures. 

But when it came to the instantaneous building of an organiza- 
tion, conditions were different. There had never been a very 
large number of skilled ship workers on the Pacific Coast. In the 
Puget Sound district they had been able to find employment 
only at the Bremerton Navy Yard and in the plant of the Seattle 
Construction and Drydock Company. Of course there were 
large numbers of skilled mechanics in the machine shops and 
other manufacturing plants of Puget Sound, but these men 
would decline to leave their employment unless special induce- 
ments could be offered them. 

Now it appears that the metal-working establishments of Puget 
Sound for years have been operated on the "open-shop" basis. 
Though many of the shops employed union members by the 
score and by the hundred, they refused to sign agreements for 
the exclusive employment of union men and they declined to 
introduce the uniform union scale of wages. As a result there was 
constant and open warfare between the forces of the "open" and 
of the "closed" shop, with the open-shop army victorious all 
down the line, 



Wages and Output 107 

In its great saw mill at Port Blakely the firm of Skinner & 
Eddy had consistently opposed the unions, operating and 
defending the "open shop." 

For the sake of obtaining an experienced shipbuilding organiza- 
tion in a hurry, Skinner departed from his open-shop policy. To 
superintend the plant he was creating, he had hired David 
Rodgers, formerly in a like position with the Seattle Construc- 
tion and Drydock Company, an open-shop concern. Rodgers 
had for a brother-in-law Dan McKillop, business agent of the 
boilermakers' and shipworkers' union. A strike had been 
called in the Seattle Construction yard to unionize the plant, 
and this strike was being fought bitterly by the company. Tak- 
ing advantage of all these conditions, Skinner & Eddy made a 
pact with the unions to run a strictly union, "closed-shop" 
shipyard and agreed to a wage scale considerably in advance of 
the rates then current. 

When the Skinner & Eddy yard began operations early in 1916, 
it applied the selective draft to every establishment in Seattle. 
The skilled mechanics of the Seattle Construction and Drydock 
Company were taken over almost in a body. The unions, anxious 
to drive a wedge deep into the ranks of the open-shop forces, 
cooperated with a will. Within a short time the new yard was 
going full blast. 

Other yards came into existence. In order to obtain mechanics 
they were obliged to follow the Skinner & Eddy course and make 
agreements with the unions stipulating that none but union men 
should be employed. Even the old established yard had to strike 
its colors and abandon the open-shop policy to keep running. 

When all the shipyards were completely unionized, Skinner & 
Eddy had lost their initial advantage. To hold their men, to 
obtain needed new ones they must offer attractive inducements 
in the form of higher compensation. They began to raise wages, 
to entice men from other establishments by offers of higher pay. 
Three times a certain plant filled its blacksmith shop with me- 
chanics, three times they quit and went over to Skinner & Eddy. 
Stealing men became a fine art. The entire industrial fabric 
became frazzled at the edges. Like prospectors hearing of a new 
strike, men threw down their tools at the slightest provocation to 
stampede elsewhere for a little higher pay. 

Nor did Skinner & Eddy quit raising the ante. They kept on , 
giving it a lift despite the plea of their competitors, who begged 
them not to carry the process of demoralization farther. Bitter 
feeling grew up against Skinner personally; for a while he was 
shunned by many of his former associates, who pointedly avoided 
all contact with him. But the game went on until Skinner & 
Eddy paid a wage of six dollars for eight hours. 



108 Union Labor in Peace and War 

Up and down the Pacific Coast union officials pointed to the 
Skinner & Eddy rate with demands for equally high pay. To 
obtain this pay, strikes involving 50,000 shipworkers and lasting 
two or three weeks occurred last fall in California, Oregon and 
Washington. When the Federal Wage Adjustment Board settled 
the strikes, it declined to accept the six-dollar scale as the stand- 
ard for the Pacific Coast and fixed #5.25 as a just and liberal 
average, but union pressure shortly induced the Emergency Fleet 
Corporation to lift this rate ten per cent to #5.80. A few months 
later the wage scale in all the shipyards of the Atlantic Coast was 
increased proportionately. 

I have yet to see the employer who objects to the size of the 
wages he is paying. Not one of the Puget Sound shipbuilders 
expressed a desire to reduce wages, but they all emphasized the 
vital need of obtaining for the abnormally high wages at least a 
normal day's output. This normal day's output they were not 
able to obtain for a long time. 

The riveting gang determines absolutely the speed at which a 
ship shall be built. Given an adequate supply of steel, it is com- 
paratively easy to put this material in proper condition to be put 
together by the riveters. The average standardized ship of 
8800 deadweight tons contains approximately 540,000 rivets. 
The length of time required to drive this half million rivets 
absolutely governs the progress of work on the entire ship. The 
rate of this progress depends upon two factors, the number of 
riveting gangs employed and the number of rivets they will or 
can drive per hour. The maximum number of gangs is determined 
by the compressed-air equipment of the yard and the supply of 
available riveters; the number of rivets driven in a given time 
by the gangs depends upon the skill, experience and industry of 
the worker. 

Before the present shipbuilding boom it was assumed that any 
yard driving an average of 300 perfect rivets per gang in eight hours 
counting in all the rivets from the easiest to the hardest, was 
doing its work with reasonable efficiency. Not one Seattle yard 
had reached the 250-rivet mark in March. Four of the five steel- 
ship yards in January averaged from 200 rivets downward per 
gang in eight hours. One of them dropped below 170 rivets per 
gang, did not reach 60 per cent of what should be the normal out- 
put. Yet Seattle held the record for launching and completing 
1 a steamer in the shortest time. 

What was the reason for this abnormally low production at a 
time when maximum output per man was vitally needed? 

Shortage of material, said the labor-union spokesmen. They 
were right, in part. A great many delays occurred through the 
non-arrival of steel, and quite often the formen, afraid to lose 



Wages and Output 109 

their crews, kept them on the payroll when there was little to do 
temporarily, but this condition was remedied rapidly. It was 
not nearly as bad as it was late in the summer of 1917, and in 
January it had only a minor effect upon the production of the 
Seattle yards. 

Undoubtedly it is true that a large factor responsible for the 
low output was the employment of inexperienced men. In 191 5 
there were barely enough experienced riveters to go around. 
In 191 7, when the war program began, the demand exceeded the 
supply three or four times. Though riveters by the hundred 
were taken out of the building trades, it was necessary to promote 
helpers, to break in new and inexperienced men by the score in 
every yard and the poor showing of these beginners pulled down 
the general average. 

Inefficient or inexperienced foremen, lack of the right system, 
mistakes in management, all helped to reduce the output, yet all 
these factors combined are not sufficient to explain the enormous 
discrepancy between peace production and war-time output. 
Perhaps the experience of a yard in the Pacific Northwest which 
has closely watched the output in all departments month by 
month will help to explain the phenomenon. 

In August, 1917, the average wage paid in this yard, including 
every employee from the youngest apprentice to the oldest fore- 
man, amounted to 39.7 cents per hour. During that month the 
average amount of steel handled and worked up in the shop 
aggregated 10.6 tons per man employed. 

In September the Federal Wage Adjustment Board lifted the 
wage scale. As a result the average wage in December had risen 
from 39.7 to 46.4 cents per hour, but the amount of steel worked 
up dropped from 10.6 tons per month to 8.96 tons. 

In December another 10 per cent increase was granted the men, 
lifting the average wage to 53.3 cents per hour in January. That 
month the production per man dropped still further to 8.92 tons. 

Between August and January the average riveter's wage rose 
forty per cent. In the same period the number of rivets driven 
per gang in eight hours dropped from an average of 277 in August 
to 221 in January. 

In this period the organization of the yard was not appreciably 
enlarged. The new men who had been taken on during spring 
and early summer were becoming better trained every week. 
No serious shortage of material occurred either in December or 
January. What, then, can be the reason for the decline in pro- 
duction ? 

Human nature principally. Any business man will readily 
admit that his hardest fighting is done when the concern is 
struggling for a toe-hold among its competitors, when the com- 



no Union Labor in Peace and War 

bat for orders, for credit, for customers and capital is going full 
blast. Once the concern is solidly established, has accumulated 
a surplus and an array of faithful customers who stand without 
hitching, the lunch hour expands, the golf links call and the open 
road lures. Only the exceptional man lengthens his stride, his 
pace and his hours when his income increases and his position 
becomes assured. 

Unconsciously, without knowing it, the average worker is 
doing what the average business man does under similar circum- 
stances. He eases off a little as the pressure decreases, as his 
thoughts turn to new interests made possible by larger earnings. 
It is thus not only in the Pacific Northwest but everywhere in the 
country; suddenly increased earnings have been followed by a 
general though unconscious slackening of the pace. 

In England, France and Italy the output increased tremen- 
dously, the gait was speeded almost to the limit of endurance 
because these countries heard the roar of cannon, saw children 
torn by aerial bombs, had the actualities of war brought into 
every individual home. Over here the war for a long time was 
more or less an academic subject really touching only those who 
had given a son or a brother to the cause of democracy. For wide 
strata of the population the war was merely an incident like the 
destruction of Messina or a famine in India, deplorable but hav- 
ing little meaning to them personally. 

In the Puget Sound district this academic aloofness was best 
illustrated by the attitude of many labor union officials toward 
the war. H. M. Wells was charged with obstructing the draft 
law while he was president of the Seattle Central Labor Council. 
He was tried, convicted and sentenced in the United States 
District Court, whereupon the Central Labor Council appointed 
a committee to "investigate" the proceedings that led to Wells' 
conviction. 

The union musicians and stage employees resented this action 
of the Labor Council. So they passed a resolution declaring their 
opposition "against the Central Labor Council taking any part in 
secret or public investigations which will in any manner appear 
as though they were interceding with this government in its 
activities to brand disloyalty and remove discontent. " When 
this resolution was submitted to the Central Labor Council, that 
body consigned it promptly to the waste paper basket, but not 
before James Duncan, secretary of the Council, had a chance to 
defend the principles of trade unionism. 

Deploring the attacks upon the patriotism of the Central 
Labor Council, attacks coming from the ranks of the unions 
themselves, he asserted, according to a Socialist Seattle paper, 
that "where there is no unionism there is no patriotism, j or unionism 



Wages and Output hi 

is the highest form of patriotism," thus branding the ninety per 
cent of American workers who do not belong to unions as devoid 
of patriotism. 

"You can't do your bit for your country if you can't do your 
bit for your union," declared Duncan, while the delegates cheered. 

What did Duncan mean when he proclaimed that adherence to 
union principles was the highest form of patriotism? Did he 
mean the "closed shop," the limitation of apprentices, the rigid 
division of tasks among the crafts with its resulting jurisdictional 
disputes, the unwritten but nevertheless effective limitation of 
output? British labor, confronted by the realities of war, agreed 
to remove and did away with every known union principle in 
order to make maximum production possible, thus admitting 
that these union principles did in fact hamper and restrict out- 
put. Is it possible, did Duncan mean to say that these selfsame 
union principles, condemned by the greatest and most sympa- 
thetic union writers, Sydney and Beatrice Webb, had the opposite 
effect when applied in the shipyards and shops of Puget Sound? 

A score of men operating machine shops and foundries turning 
out shipbuilding and war supplies in Seattle assured me that their 
output per man had not decreased abnormally, that their em- 
ployees, both union and non-union men, were giving them 
faithful and loyal services. They related that, in the middle of 
March, the business agent of the molders' union demanded the 
removal of a semi-skilled man operating a molding machine 
efficiently and insisted upon his replacement by a full-fledged, 
skilled molder, making this demand in spite of a scarcity of skilled 
molders so great that the foundry of the largest Seattle shipyard 
had been unable to operate three months out of four. When the 
demand was refused the molders in this foundry were ordered to 
strike. Being sensible men, they discussed the order and de- 
clined to obey. The semi-skilled man is still operating the 
machine efficiently, a skilled molder is still doing badly needed 
work and an unnecessary strike called to enforce an obsolete 
union principle has been avoided, largely because the contract 
shops of Seattle are not under the business agents' control and 
deny them any authority. 

Union principles, on the other hand, have full sway in all the 
Seattle yards building steel ships. The "closed shop" prevails; 
every worker must have a union card; he cannot remain employed 
in them without a card. I was told by more than one shipbuilder 
that twenty to thirty per cent of the men could be discharged 
without materially diminishing the output, but that such action 
would bring on a general strike. I was told of conditions similar 
to those described by Business Agent McGuire of the San Fran- 
cisco boilermakers' union, of numerous shirkers, of "crap" 



ii2 Union Labor in Peace and War 

games and boxing bouts during working hours, though the 
unanimous testimony was that these glaring derelictions were 
practically over, that conditions were improving. 

I was told by men who ought to know that the riveters in the 
yard which is the stronghold and citadel of the Seattle boiler- 
makers' union in January drove the smallest average number of 
rivets per gang on Puget Sound, that the highest average number 
of rivets on Puget Sound was driven in the youngest yard located 
farthest from the Seattle Labor Temple. I was told of five gangs 
that drove a total of twenty-two rivets in eight hours. When dis- 
charged, the men complained to the federal employment bureau 
alleging that the low record they established was due to the lack 
of material. 

In the private establishments of Puget Sound, establishments 
employing thousands of union men, but basing the rate of pay 
more or less upon individual ability, few complaints about re- 
duced production were heard even though these establishments 
were being raided constantly by the shipyards. In the shipyards, 
however, where a flat minimum wage prevailed, where full union 
conditions were in force and the business agents' word was law, 
complaints about the lack of output on the part of the boiler- 
makers were frequent. Did Duncan mean to say that the princi- 
ples responsible for this condition are the highest form of patriot- 
ism? 

The entire Northwest was short of skilled molders in March. 
Important war work was being delayed by this shortage, yet the 
Spokane union molders went on strike. They were satisfied with 
the standard wage of six dollars for eight hours and time and a 
half for overtime. They struck for the "closed shop," and they 
wanted a full union shop principally because they did not want 
to relieve the shortage by teaching their trade to others. They 
struck because they wanted to reduce the number of learners to 
one for every five journeymen irrespective of the dire need of 
more trained molders. 

Was this the "highest form of patriotism" Duncan spoke of? 

There are reasons, good reasons from the worker's point of 
view, for every one of the rules and practices enforced by the 
unions. They are all designed to prevent exploitation of the 
individual, to diminish competition among the men for the job, 
to prevent undue speeding-up, to assure the skilled man of ade- 
quate pay for his skill. These rules were all borrowed from the 
practices of British trade unions. The British unions have by 
agreement cast them aside during the war to make maximum 
production possible. Can the American trade union do less? 

Samuel Gompers and scores of other union leaders are doing 
their best to bring about maximum production; the majority of 



Wages and Output 113 

the rank and file is cooperating loyally and faithfully, but in many 
crafts the radical bolsheviki element, the whole-hog irreconcilable 
faction longing for a Russian revolution in America is in control. 
Where this faction is dominant it openly defies the authorities, as 
in British Columbia, where certain unions struck to bring about 
the release of a union man, charged with being a draft evader. 
They obtained the release of this man before his innocence or 
guilt had been determined, and went back to work. 

Ninety per cent of the workers in the war industries of the 
Pacific Coast are satisfied, contented, loyal; ninety per cent of 
the employers are living up to the letter and spirit of the war 
agreement. If this ninety per cent is left undisturbed, production 
in the shipyards and shops will show a steady increase. The 
danger lies in the activities of the radical ten per cent on either 
side. The union-baiting employer, the capitalist who tries to 
disregard the spirit of the war agreement with labor, will have 
his plant taken from him by the government. It is comparatively 
easy to make him toe the mark. 

How about controlling the activities of the radical minority 
on the other side? It can be done. Public sentiment is over- 
whelmingly against them, just as public sentiment is against the 
profiteer and labor exploiter. Whatever firm, drastic steps the 
government may choose to take against the ultra-radicals on 
either side will be supported strongly by that great mass of the 
American people whose one aim is to win the war. 



CHAPTER XII 
LABOR MONOPOLIES AND THEIR RESULTS 

The wooden-ship program has had as many ups and downs as 
an active elevator, as much grief as Job and as clean a rise as 
Goethals had at Panama. For a while the nations hoped that 
half of the bridge of ships across the Atlantic would be built of 
wood; a little while later, when William Denman and General 
Goethals made the bark fly, the wooden-ship program dropped 
out of sight behind the stormy horizon. There it stayed so far 
as public interest was concerned. When the nation began to 
realize the desperate need of ships, be they steel, wood, com- 
posite or concrete, the material which taught men the art of 
navigation came into its own again. 

It is mighty fortunate that the wooden-ship builders of the 
Pacific Coast, more especially of Oregon and Washington, did 
not lose heart in the discouraging days of 191 7. They went ahead 
irrespective of the controversy over the merits and demerits of 
wooden ships. They started to build them anyway and their 
product is now proving to be of incalculable value. Even if the 
wooden ships are not the decisive factor in the world conflict, they 
may be the commercial salvation of the Pacific Coast ports, for it 
is in wooden vessels that these ports must carry on their export 
and import trade next year. Every available steel vessel most 
certainly will be pressed into the Atlantic service when it becomes 
necessary to keep a million and a half American boys in France 
supplied with food, ammunition and equipment. 

It is certain that no suitable steamers plying the Pacific under 
the American flag will remain there very long. Therefore the 
Pacific ports will have to rely largely on the new wooden fleet now 
building on every nook and inlet. 

It took the wooden yards a long time to find their stride. 
They were three to six months behind the schedule of deliveries 
early in 1918. When contracts dropped out of the Washington 
sky like hail, those who rushed out with buckets to garner the 
crop underestimated the difficulty of getting started. They did 
not realize that it takes time to cut timber for shipbuilding, 
that it takes more time to build and equip the yard, that an 
organization of shipbuilders cannot be produced like a rabbit out 
of a silk hat, that the makers of boilers and engines might fall 
down on their part of the job. Yet the builders might have over- 
come the obstacles, their delay might be measured in weeks in- 
stead of months, but for the long succession of strikes in 1917* 



Labor Monopolies and Their Results 115 

The I. W. W. started the dance. In July they called out the 
timber workers throughout the Pacific Northwest. Fifty 
thousand men responded, and many of them did not return to 
work until October. Even after they returned their output was 
far below normal. In many camps and mills it took six months 
to restore the usual pace, and in the meantime the big ship tim- 
bers came forth all too slowly. 

Thereafter the wooden-ship workers themselves struck, staying 
out from four to six weeks. When they returned, the mechanics 
in the boiler and machine shops and foundries struck for three 
weeks, delaying the completion of the engines, shafts and other 
metal equipment. In addition it took time to train the twelve 
thousand new men recruited for the Northwestern shipyards, and 
while they were in training their output was necessarily low. 

Most of the labor troubles in the wooden-ship yards of the 
Pacific Coast were settled amicably before Christmas, 191 7. Only 
the caulkers held out stubbornly, and for a while their obstinate 
resistance was such a menace to the entire program that the 
Shipping Board in February, 191 8, considered it necessary 
publicly to denounce the attitude of the caulkers' organization. 

As in San Francisco, so the caulkers' unions of the Columbia 
river and the Puget Sound districts constituted a closed corpora- 
tion. No caulkers were to be had outside of the union. In the 
State of Washington the union would allow no apprentices except 
one in each yard. As there were only two wooden-ship yards in 
the state before the boom came, the number of boys learning 
the caulker's trade was microscopically small. 

Nevertheless it was large enough for the needs of the craft. 
The building of wooden ships was dying. The caulkers were 
chronically out of work. Few of them managed to put in more 
than two weeks' labor a month and, until the war came, there 
seemed to be no chance of ever reviving the industry. The 
younger, more active men abandoned the caulkers' trade and 
went into new, more promising lines of activity. The older 
men, unable or unwilling to make a new start in life, stayed in 
the trade and thanked Providence for the organization which 
kept up the wage, kept out competition and gave each caulker 
a fair chance to share in the small amount of available work. 

When Mars waved his sword and shipyards began to sprout 
out of the tide flats by the dozen, the total number of caulkers 
in the Puget Sound district did not exceed 125, all members of 
the union. No longer did they sit around in headquarters wait- 
ing for a call to come. Every last one of them was steadily em- 
ployed, and almost every evening the foremen of the new yards 
stood at the gates of the older ones with offers of higher pay for 
experienced men, especially caulkers. Wages went up rapidly 



n6 Union Labor in Peace and War 

from five to six, to seven, to eight dollars a day. Men who had 
quit caulking for other lines came back to the trade and rejoined 
the union. By early fall the membership had grown to 180 with- 
out, however, satisfying the growing demand. 

Looking ahead the shipyard owners saw trouble coming. By 
February, 1918, they would need 300 caulkers; in March they 
would need 350; in April they would need 100 more; by May it 
would require the services of more than 600 caulkers to tighten 
the seams of the new wooden fleet. Where was this number to 
come from? 

They presented the situation to the caulkers' union. The 
union amended its by-laws. Instead of one apprentice per yard, 
it allowed two. Also it agreed that every union caulker should 
work ten hours instead of eight, the last two hours to be paid for 
at double the normal rate; in addition the caulkers who cared to 
do so might work on Sundays at double the usual rate. 

By fall of 191 7, the bidding of one yard against the other 
had carried the caulkers' wages to #8.40 for eight hours. Since 
nearly all of them were working ten hours and many of them 
labored on Sunday, their earnings rose to $12.60 a day, to $16.80 
on Sundays, to $92.40 for the full work of seven days, though the 
shipbuilders allege that the output in ten hours did not increase 
perceptibly over the eight-hour day. And every week the short- 
age in the supply of caulkers increased. 

To increase this supply, the shipyard owners requested that 
each caulker teach his trade to a helper, thus doubling the num- 
ber in six or eight weeks. The caulkers declined. They pointed 
out that such a course would multiply the number of caulkers 
far beyond the need of normal times and might deprive them of 
their daily bread, whereupon the employers pointed out that 
exactly the same condition existed among the ship carpenters, 
the molders, riveters, machinists, in every trade engaged in build- 
ing ships. They showed that the United States would be bound 
hand and foot if every union had adopted the same attitude, 
that the expansion of any war industry would be absolutely im- 
possible if the mechanics decided to bar any newcomers who 
might compete with the old men for the jobs after the war. 
But the caulkers' union, all arguments notwithstanding, stood pat. 

To relieve the immediate shortage, the union officials sug- 
gested that the caulkers in the Mississippi Valley, about a hundred 
in number, be brought to Puget Sound. This the government 
would not allow, as the men would be needed on the Altantic 
and Gulf Coasts. Thus the deadlock continued until the caulkers' 
union receded from its position and offered to have each caulker 
teach the trade to a helper, provided the caulker received extra 
pay for the instructions in addition to the usual wage. 



Labor Monopolies and Their Results 117 

This offer the employers declined. They were afraid of the 
effect of still higher compensation upon the other classes of 
mechanics in the yards. Already the carpenters were grumbling 
at the high wages received by the caulkers, growling because they 
had fought for the eight-hour day while the caulkers were work- 
ing ten. 

In January, 1918, when several ships were completed but 
could not be launched because they were not caulked, the 
situation became acute and the Shipping Board interceded. In 
February the yard owners took the bull by the horns, restored the 
eight-hour day and returned to the wage rate fixed by the federal 
adjustment board, $7.15 a day, whereupon the caulkers struck. 

This strike and the increased shortage of caulkers aroused the 
carpenters' union. If this shortage was not remedied, by-and-by 
more than half the ways would be crowded with completed ships 
which could not be launched because they were not caulked, no 
new keels could be laid on these ways, the industry would slow 
down and two-thirds of the carpenters would be without jobs. 
To forestall such a calamity and to help the vital shipbuilding 
program, the union carpenters assured the employers and the 
Shipping Board that they were ready to caulk the ships irre- 
spective of the caulkers' union, to furnish experienced caulkers 
to act as teachers and carpenters to learn the trade. 

When the caulkers realized that a seventeen-inch shell had hit 
their bomb-proof monopoly, they gave in. Each caulker took an 
apprentice to learn the trade. They went even further. They 
agreed to let all those parts of the work requiring little skill, 
such as spinning the oakum, be done by common labor, confining 
their own task to the work requiring skill and experience. 

On the Columbia river the shipbuilders had a similar experience 
with the caulkers' union, whose members also believed that their 
individual welfare was of greater importance than the fate of the 
country. They also refused to divulge the mysteries of the craft 
to outsiders, but they likewise climbed on the band wagon after 
one of the largest wooden yards opened a caulking school with 
over a hundred pupils. 

These caulkers were not intentionally unpatriotic. Many of 
them had sons or brothers in the army, practically all of them 
bought Liberty Bonds and joined the Red Cross. But the fear 
of the future was upon them; for many years the union had 
enabled them to get higher wages, to maintain a monopoly in 
their trade, to equalize the opportunities for work. The union 
had been their shield and their buckler, the heavy armor pro- 
tecting them from the blows of inexorable economic law. When 
the great emergency arose the big fact of their union was ever so 
close to their eyes that they could not see the bigger fact of the 





Though the number of caulkers was far too low to take care of the new wooden 
fleet, the union refused to surrender its caulking monopoly until forced to. The 
San Francisco caulkers' union was maintaining its job monopoly till late in 1918. 



Labor Monopolies and Their Results 119 

war and its urgent needs. Only when they realized that the regu- 
lations of the union were as a straw in a tidal wave did they bow 
to the inevitable. 

The shipwrights of the Pacific Coast found themselves in a posi- 
tion analogous to that of the caulkers. Theirs was a dying trade 
carried on largely by older men making a precarious living, main- 
taining a monopoly of their craft because no one disputed it with 
them. When the wooden-ship contracts began to drop like 
manna from heaven, the shipwrights' unions of the Northwest 
for a short while looked upon the hordes of house and bridge 
carpenters with jaundiced eyes, resenting their swarming entry 
into the domain that had been the shipwrights' undisputed 
property for many years. But the feeling soon passed away, the 
men joined hands irrespective of training and affiliation and went 
at the task with a will. At least in the Northwest they did. In 
San Francisco they acted otherwise. 

"It has repeatedly come to the attention of your general officers 
in the past few months that building tradesmen, with a perfectly 
good paid-up book of many years' standing and a current 
quarterly working card of this council, cannot secure steady or 
permanent employment in the shipyards. 

"Able, faithful, self-sacrificing and willing, they stand ready to 
help build the ships which are needed to bridge the Atlantic in 
numbers sufficient to safely transport men, munitions and pro- 
visions to drive the enemy back to its lairs, if not to its senses. 

"But certain local unions and their members seem to raise the 
old jurisdictional objection; in place of welcoming union men, 
they look for green and raw recruits and initiative fees. 

"That seems to be a part of the same spirit which actuates the 
profiteers, and not the kind of loyalty to the cause, the govern- 
ment and the nation which should be expected of good union 
men. 

"At present there are thousands of builders, artisans, mechanics 
and laborers idle in California, and, in the coming year, their 
numbers will increase. A few of them found employment on the 
reinforced concrete ships, but reinforced concrete construction 
of ships is still in the experimental stage. 

"By all that is humanitarian and by all that we hope, let it not 
be said that the jurisdictional disputes are hampering war work. 
That would be the most wretched American citizenship and the 
greatest comfort to the enemy." 

These are not the words of a "plutocratic hireling." The 
paragraphs here quoted are from the annual address of O. A. 
Tveitmoe, secretary of the California State Building Trades' 
Council, in convention assembled on March 19, 1918, and they 
refer to the efforts made by the union shipwrights to keep union 



120 Union Labor in Peace and War 

house carpenters out of the San Francisco district shipyards, 
both steel and wood. The methods used by one set of union men 
to keep another set of union men away from this most important 
war work are clearly set forth in the following communication 
written by a loyal San Francisco union member. 

"These are some of the principles of Unionism that the Govern- 
ment is up against at the present time in regard to the ship- 
building industry and in particular the shipwright, carpenter and 
joiner work on the ships and in the shipyards. 

"This branch of the union is controlled by the Maritime Bay 
District Council of carpenters and joiners. 

"As you may know the United States has not been a ship- 
producing nation. Our merchant marine had all but gone to 
the dogs, and as a result of these conditions there were no trained 
shipbuilders in the country. The scant few that were on the 
Pacific Coast were hardly enough to form a skeleton crew for 
one-third of the yards in existence. Now at that time the ship- 
wrights had a small union or, I should say, a closed corporation. 
They had no apprentice system, neither did they have any known 
way of perpetuating their craft. 

"The result was that when there was a call for shipbuilders 
they were totally unprepared to meet this new situation. 

"The only thing they had was their union. At first they did 
did not know just what to do. They could not do the work 
demanded of them and they did not want any one else to do it. 
They tried to hold up, but it was no use, so they opened their 
doors very grudgingly and took in a few members from the 
uptown unions. They took in all that had any training at ship- 
building until most all of the semi-experienced men were in their 
union. Then there being no more with experience they closed 
their doors, and said to the mechanics from all other wood-work- 
ing crafts: 'We will not let you work unless you are a regular 
ship carpenter.' Get that? 

"Still the demand for men increased. The employer had to 
have his work done and he couldn't get men from the shipwrights' 
union, so he started to employ house carpenters, and I think 
he was very agreeably surprised to find that they could do any- 
where from 50 to 100 per cent more work in a day than the old 
ship carpenter with his dull saws, rusty chisels and generally 
inferior tools could do in a day. That hurt the ship caprenter 
very much. He got scared and made up his mind 'that something 
had to be done.' The 'dirty house jack,' as the house carpenter 
is very contemptuously called by him, must be stopped or he 
would have all the work completed and he, the ship carpenter, 
would be out of a job and would have to go back to bench warm- 
ing or, far worse, scow building; so they started to discourage 



Labor Monopolies and Their Results 121 

fast workers. Of course they didn't find that hard work, as most 
any man will work easy when he can, especially if he knows there 
is no danger of being canned or fired. Still, with it all work kept 
increasing, the demands for men got to be one steady call, house 
carpenters kept demanding admittance to the local, and there 
didn't seem to be any way to stop taking them into the local, 
but one meeting night a way was devised to stop the influx of 
house carpenters, to-wit: 

"When the house carpenter went out and got a job in the ship- 
yard there would be a permit issued by the shipwrights' business 
agent. The permit would call for the signatures of skilled ship- 
wrights, who must have known you were a real bona fide ship- 
wright and be able to swear that you had served your time at the 
trade. It also was fixed so that no shipwright in the yard in 
which you worked could sign your permit, and be it also known 
that if anybody signed your permit and it was found out that you 
were not a real shipwright, the gentleman who kindly let you 
have the use of his name was to be fined #50. 

"Now you will notice that all of the existing shipwrights were 
employed and in the union. They had no apprentice system 
and there being a scarcity of that kind of work before the war, 
there was no way for any more shipwrights to be had. No mem- 
ber could sign your application card, and if you were lucky enough 
to have it signed, the examining board with their trick questions 
would trip you up. Anyway and as a result they had you coming 
and going. 

"Still, with work increasing all the time those miserable 
'house jacks' kept getting into the shipyards till they almost 
outnumbered the shipwrights. It was finally decided that no 
more mechanics could go out and seek work from the yards. The 
employer must come to the union headquarters and get his men 
from there. No foreman could employ any one in the capacity 
of shipwright unless he came through the shop, and to come 
through there you would have to have a regular shipwright's 
union card, and no house carpenter could get a job from that shop 
unless he had a permit from the business agent to work as a ship- 
wright, and that could not be had unless the business agent 
knew that all shipwrights were at work. If any foreman em- 
ployed any outside man he was fined. 

"If you will stop and think for a minute you will see how com- 
pletely this law of the union shut out any other mechanic who 
might wish to go to work in the shipyards at that particular 
trade. There was one labor leader who saw these things and he 
put up a real good fight against them. P. H. McCarthy, of the 
Building Trades' Council, knew that those principles were not 
and never could be good union principles. So he made up his 



122 Union Labor in Peace and War 

mind that those things must stop. He proceeded to get busy with 
the big man in the East, with the result that the shipwrights had 
to come to terms. Just one instance will be sufficient to explain 
why an agreement was so necessary. 

"I was working in a shipyard. Unfortunately I did not have a 
shipwright's card, although my card was issued by the Maritime 
Bay District Council, but it was from a ship joiners' local. Some 
other mechanics working with me were regular carpenters from 
the Building Trades Unions. There were four shipwrights on the 
job, that is, there were four shipwrights' cards, but only one real 
bona fide shipwright. The other three were would-be's. They 
decided they would not work with us, as we did not have our 
permits, so they sent one of their number over to us, all Americans 
mind you, to inform us that we would have to lay off work, as 
we had no permits to work as shipwrights. Unfortunately the 
one they chose to do the dirty work happened to be a German 
with his first papers only. I may add that we all stayed right 
there and worked and they didn't walk ofF the job. Reason 
prevailed. However, they still have a strangle-hold and it is a 
very hard thing for a house carpenter to get a job in a shipyard, 
for he cannot get in until all shipwrights are employed. 

"I know of one case where four men waited for a whole day 
before they could get permits to go to work. They had jobs and 
it cost them one day's pay to sit in the headquarters keeping 
chairs warm waiting for some one to show up who could issue 
permits to them. I know of another case where four men had to 
wait till between eight and nine o'clock at night before they could 
find a business agent to give them permits to go to work on their 
regular work. I have worked on my present job several months 
and a fellow-worker and myself had to wait till next morning 
before we could get our monthly permit to work. Mind you, 
the business agent was on the job that day and it would not have 
taken him a half hour to go to the men that had no permits and 
issue same to them. However, he did nothing of the kind. It 
cost me two and a half hours pay to get that permit. It cost 
the government two and a half hours' labor and time through one 
man being off the job. Not that one case has any importance, 
but taken as a whole the men lose a great deal of time and money 
and the government loses all that time and work that ought to be 
done. 

"I think that the conditions that I have tried to explain are 
not and can never be good union principles, and that it is very 
poor policy on the unions' part to practice the same principles 
that they so vehemently preach against. Still you will have to 
remember that those are the principles that are set before the 
laborers every day of their lives. The laborer sees nothing but 



Labor Monopolies and Their Results 123 

corporations and trusts gotten up for the purpose of driving 
competition from the field and the hogging of industries. He 
sees them break the laws of the land with impunity and corrupt 
officials beat down labor to the lowest wage and use every effort 
that can be brought to bear to keep him from protecting himself, 
and do you wonder that the laborer uses these same methods 
himself? You see him not only using the methods he has learned 
against his employers, but you see him using them against his 
brother laborers. 

"Does the employer take the right road to protect himself? Oh, 
no, not big business, they will not be dictated to. They will com- 
mand and lo! their commands must be obeyed. They say to the 
laborer: 'You stop organizing your unions and unionizing all the 
trades or we will stop employing you. You must not think to have 
any say in regard to the conditions of your employment. You 
must and will take what we see fit to give you and we will be the 
judge of your mental and physical condition.' The result is that 
labor has thrown down the gauntlet and has come up to the wire 
ready for the fight, with the knowledge that might is one of the 
greatest factors in any kind of conflict; also that the preponder- 
ance of right is on their side. They have control of the labor 
market and now let a little reason shine forth on this blackest of 
problems, let the big fellows see that we are human beings and 
not a commodity to be bought and sold or thrown aside when 
they have no further use for us. We are willing to talk reason and 
meet them more than halfway in any attempt on the employers' 
part to better our conditions. There is some good common sense 
in every man and all it needs to bring these things to the surface 
is just a little human understanding of the problems of both 
parties." 

In his last paragraph the writer of this communication hits the 
nail right on the head. Human understanding practically 
applied, in the long run is a more potent cure for social ills than 
strikes, strike-breakers, machine guns, injunctions, pickets, 
dynamite, lockouts, boycotts, and all the other blood-letting 
devices of the industrial chamber of horrors. Far-sighted em- 
ployers have long since realized this obvious truth. Among the 
workers recognition of the necessity to look at a problem from 
both sides is making headway more slowly, largely because the 
worker still believes that the individual employer rather than 
the present industrial system is deliberately and wilfully with- 
holding from the laborer his just due. Once this belief is shat- 
tered, once the workers are convinced that the employer sincerely 
means to do the right thing, human understanding can begin to 
bridge the gulf. 



124 Union Labor in Peace and War 

In October, 191 7, the Emergency Fleet Corporation ordered 
the Pacific Coast shipyards engaged in government work to give 
their employees an increase of thirty-one per cent, the increase 
to be retroactive for a period of several weeks. Of course the 
yards working on private contracts had to follow suit. One of 
these yards engaged in private business was losing money on 
every wooden steamer it was building, a condition which, as- 
tounding as it may seem, prevails to this day in quite a number 
of the wooden yards. The man who was running this yard 
decided to take his men into his confidence, so he called them 
together, told them how and why he was losing money and asked 
them whether under the circumstances they thought they should 
receive the back pay granted them by the Wage Board. 

The men considered the question. Scores of them had forty 
to fifty dollars coming. It was a windfall which most of them 
had already spent in anticipation. They had the right to insist 
upon payment, but they were able and willing to see the 
employers' side. So they voted to relieve the owners of the 
obligation to pay. The owners, in turn, are figuring on dividing 
their future profits with the men. Things are fairly humming in 
that yard. 

They are humming in lots of wooden yards, especially along 
the Columbia river. Real leaders, men with human understand- 
ing, have taken hold of the situation. They have not coddled 
the workers. They are not keeping the drones and shirkers, 
afraid to fire them. They keep the material moving through the 
yards at an even, steady pace: they see to it that no one need 
stand around because tools, timber or supplies are delayed. But 
these builders do not drive: they lead. They have aroused the 
spirit of competition between crews working on individual ships, 
on groups of ships, between yards in different districts. They 
have succeeded in making the men feel proud of their work, 
personally and individually responsible for the maintenance of 
the schedule. And they have succeeded in making their men 
realize the vital part their labor plays in the war. 



CHAPTER XIII 
THE PROBLEMS OF THE I. W. W. 

In June, 1917, the farmers of the Yakima valley, in Washing- 
ton, armed themselves, organized military companies, posted 
sentinels and guards in defense of their homes and their property. 

The President had not drafted them; German submarines 
could not ascend the Yakima river with the salmon; neither a 
Mexican nor a Teuton invasion was threatened, yet the country- 
side waited tensely from day to day for the rattle of rifle shots, 
for the rising of smoke columns and the glare of burning houses 
that would mark the beginning of open war. 

At the same time federal troops were being rushed from the 
peaceful Mexican border into the copper districts of Arizona 
where armed mobs were terrorizing the camps; in Butte, Mon- 
tana, bloodshed was threatened; in the lumber camps of northern 
Idaho, in the ripening wheat fields of the Inland Empire, the 
basin of the upper Columbia, men with loaded rifles anxiously 
guarded their property against attacks by the lurking foe. In 
Colorado ominous rumblings made themselves heard in the coal 
mining districts where open war was being waged a few years ago. 
And South Dakota was calling for troops to guard the maturing 
wheat against the enemy. In half a dozen Far Western states 
the Councils of Defense were suddenly transformed into war 
departments to meet the emergency. 

Hell and the Industrial Workers of the World had broken 
loose. 

During the last seven or eight years the Industrial Workers of 
the World — commonly known as the I. W. W. — have become a 
major problem in the United States. The I. W. W. conducted 
the bloody Colorado coal strike, the bitter strikes in the iron 
mines of Minnesota and in the copper mines of Michigan; 
they closed down the textile mills of New England, the silk mills 
of New Jersey, the oil refineries of Bayonne; injecting themselves 
into the Puget Sound shingle weavers' strike, they brought about 
Everett's "bloody Sunday," and their activities during the so- 
called free-speech fights are still vivid in the minds of San Diego, 
Fresno, Aberdeen, Spokane and many other communities. 
They terrorized the Yakima valley, groups of armed I. W. W.'s 
capturing freight trains, burning houses and crops and even 
demolishing a jail in order to liberate their imprisoned comrades. 

All of which brings up the question: Who are these Industrial 
Workers of the World? Whence came they and why? What do 



126 



Union Labor in Peace and War 



they want? What magic wand gives them the evident power 
they wield and how can this wand be taken from them? 

When Karl Marx died he was not in good standing with the 
International Union of Prophets and Soothsayers. His predic- 
tions had not come true. In his monumental work on the nature 
and function of capital, the work that became the bible of the 
Socialists, he had confidently foretold the death of the middle 
classes. According to Marx the small merchant, the small 
manufacturer, the small shopkeeper and the small capitalist were 
all doomed to speedy extinction. He was sure about it. They 
simply couldn't escape the axe. The inexorable economic laws 
discovered by Marx would ruthlessly, mercilessly operate to 
create ever larger aggregations of capital controlled by ever fewer 
men; these swollen capitalists would rapidly acquire the owner- 
ship of everything, land included, until the industrialized com- 
monwealth consisted of only two classes, the small group that 
owned everything and the endless multitudes of wage workers 
possessed of nothing except a pair of hands and a grievance. 
When this condition had been attained — and it was to be reached 
very, very soon, according to Marx — the time was ripe for the 
Social Revolution. It would then be only a short, easy step for 
the workers to take over the huge, trustified industries and oper- 
ate them for their own instead of the capitalist's benefit. 

So the followers of Marx began to organize, agitate and 
wait for the glorious day when the hearse containing the 
body of the last middle-class bourgeois shop-keeper should 
parade through the streets on the way to the Museum 
of Antiquities. Unfortunately for the Marxists and their 
theories, the middle class turned out to be an exceedingly 
tough old bird. It refused to die. On the contrary, it 
violated all the Socialist rules and regulations by wearing an 
electric belt that made it grow and prosper as it had never grown 
and prospered before. Not one trust or combination succeeded 
in obtaining complete control of any industry; in fact, the un- 
wieldy size of the great industrial combinations with few ex- 
ceptions rather stimulated the growth and multiplication of small 
establishments with an output based on the individuality of the 
owner. Production of wealth grew so enormously that the middle 
class had to grow and expand in order to look properly after the 
distribution of the mass of commodities among the consumers. 
The green bay trees had nothing on the middle class when it 
came to plain and fancy flourishing after Marx founded the 
Socialist party that was to be its pallbearer. 

To the red banner of Socialism flocked all the restless revolu- 
tionaries of the period. At last the chronic discontent of human- 
ity, a discontent as necessary to the world's progress as gasoline 



The Problem of the I. W. W. 127 

is to the propulsion of the automobile, had a gospel, a definite 
program based upon scientific analysis of economic forces. Lured 
by the vision of a material millennium held out by this economic 
gospel, the Socialist party in every European country reached 
huge proportions in an astonishingly short space of time. Within 
it assembled all the radicals of varying hues of red, all the idealists 
who hoped to blow mankind into the Porterhouse Paradise by 
means of bombs, all the Darwinists who added speed and an R 
to the doctrine of evolution, all the intellectuals who, shocked 
by the ocean of pain and misery that engulfed the lowest stratum 
of society, endeavored to cure the results of economic conditions 
with fire, powder and steel. 

It was inevitable that sharp differences of opinion should 
develop in this motley crowd. Yet the party hung together 
surprisingly well until it gained tremendous political influence, 
office and responsibility. 

Responsibility acts like ice applied to the hot revolutionary 
head. Be the radical wine ever so strong, the drinker sobers 
instantly when he is charged with the responsibility of keeping 
in motion the thousand and one activities upon which the very 
life of millions depends. Not so very long before the outbreak of 
the war a Socialist was charged with the responsibility of keep- 
ing the wheels on the French railways moving. The railroad men 
struck, but the Socialist cabinet member did not mount the soap 
box and exhort them to stand shoulder to shoulder in the fight 
with the capitalist oppressors." Oh, no; he did quite otherwise. 
He called upon the comrades to go back to work at once, imme- 
diately, instanter, if not sooner. When they declined he had the 
Secretary of War mobilize the entire outfit, call them to the colors 
and ordered them as soldiers to run the railroads. As a refusal 
would be insubordination, and insubordination is punishable 
by death in every army, the soldiering railroaders or rather the 
railroaded soldiers swore a great Gallic oath — and went back to 
work. 

So, also, Lawyer Kerensky was a fire-eating Socialist of the 
reddest type until he felt the weight of responsibility. When he 
was confronted with the possibility of a German invasion into 
Russia's very heart, his ideas concerning the immorality of 
military discipline, of the death penalty and other obsolete relics 
changed over night. 

In Germany, in France, in Italy, Sweden and Norway the 
Socialist party, gaining in power and responsibility, ceased for all 
practical purposes to be an instrument of revolution. It became a 
party of constructive protest and progress, keeping in mind its 
ultimate goal, the overthrow of the capitalist system, but in the 
meantime trying to obtain as many concessions, as many im- 



128 Union Labor in Peace and War 

provements in the lot of the present generation as it could squeeze 
out of the conservative opposition. 

Of course this policy did not please the indignant scarlet fac- 
tion. The ultra-reds began to mutter, to yell, to scream; before 
their eyes the vision of the Social Revolution, of the impending 
Porterhouse Paradise in which no one except maybe the expro- 
priated capitalists would have to eat stew, vanished into the dim 
distance. A great many workingmen, living in comfortable 
quarters in attractive surroundings, working reasonable hours 
for fair pay, were actually becoming hideously contented with 
their lot! 

More than twenty years ago a group of discontented French 
rebels left the bed and board of old-line Socialism, armed itself 
with a self-made divorce decree and started a deep red revolu- 
tionary menage of its own. The old-line Socialists believed in the 
efficacy of the ballot box; if they could gain control of parliament 
overwhelmingly, they hoped to decree the socializing of industry 
by law, thus accomplishing the overthrow of capitalism peaceably. 
The secessionists — they called themselves Syndicalists — sneered 
at the ballot box, maintained that political action was too 
slow, too cumbersome and too ineffective for real results, 
abandoned the voting booth and placed their entire faith in 
Direct Action. 

Direct Action is a euphonious synonym for kicking the boss 
where he lives — in the pocketbook. According to the philosophy 
of the Syndicalists, a condition of endless warfare exists between 
employer and employed. Since war recognizes no law, the work- 
man is bound to obey none. So long as the act is directed against 
the employer, he can commit no crime — unless he is found out. 
Since all laws are held to be made by and for the employer, 
the Syndicalist denies their validity, nor will he enter 
into any agreements with employers or be bound by any con- 
tracts. Strikes with them are the normal condition; the periods 
of work represent merely the necessary truce in which to prepare 
for the greater fight. 

The Syndicalists introduced the word sabotage into a dozen 
languages. They borrowed the term from the silk weavers of 
Lyons who, as they went out on strike, hurled their wooden shoes 
— sabots — into the delicate machinery of the looms. Sabotage 
came to mean any act through which the worker could inflict 
pecuniary damage upon the employer. Books were written and 
circulated, telling the discontented Syndicalist how to ruin bear- 
ings by filling them with emery dust, how to spoil boilers by 
charging their water with washing powder, how to commit a 
thousand depredations that would cause loss to the boss without 
endangering the malefactor. 



The Problem of the I. W. W. 129 

Nor did they look with reverence and compassion upon their 
brethren in the trade unions. On the contrary, they proceeded 
to attack them almost as bitterly as they had hit at the capitalists. 
The Syndicalists declared that the trade-unionist was merely a 
small-potato capitalist in disguise, fully as anxious and willing 
to defend his job monopoly against all comers, fully as willing 
to cut his fellow-workers' throat as the capitalist. They main- 
tained that a system which enabled the employer to play one 
craft against the other in the same shop, which caused the en- 
gineers to stay at work when the trainmen went out, was all 
wrong, and they proceeded to supplant it with their own system: 
One Big Union. According to their ideas all the workers in a 
given industry should belong to a single union international in its 
scope, and these industrial unions in turn should respond to 
one central body. Upon the appointed day, at the dawn of the 
Social Revolution, every worker in all the industrial world would 
join in the final General Strike and, presto! the porterhouse 
millennium would be there, full blown, the era of stew and beans 
for the workers would vanish in a twinkling. Against the folded 
arms of the world's workers all the bayonets and machine guns 
of capital would be helpless, argues the I. W. W. 

That is the theory, the philosophy underlying the activities of 
the international revolutionary organization agitating in the 
United States as the I. W. W. It is anti-nationalistic, anti- 
patriotic, anti-militaristic to the core; it recognizes no law; it 
declines to hamper its freedom of action by agreements or con- 
tracts; as in Butte, it strikes first and makes its demands after- 
ward. Unlike many craft unions, it never "closes its charter." 
It does not charge five, ten, fifty or a hundred dollars' initiation 
fee. A dollar gives any worker admission to its ranks, and it 
draws no line of color, race or sex. Its organization is as elastic 
as the Constitution and it is as hard to eradicate as the boll 
weevil. And its greatest, deepest strength lies in the fact that 
it extends the red hand of fellowship to the lowliest of the workers, 
that it has made itself the special champion of those who are paid 
the least and work the longest and the hardest, that it has taken 
up the cudgels for the "wops" and the "bohunks," for the masses 
of the ignorant immigrants neglected by the authorities, despised 
even by their aristocratic native fellow-workers, abandoned by 
all to the mercy of the greediest among employers, of the most 
brutal among gang bosses. 

I am not singing a panegyric of the I. W. W. I am merely 
endeavoring to analyze and lay bare the sources from which this 
organization of avowed rebels derives its immense strength, a 
power vast enough to shut down the country's greatest copper 
mines during a period when every pound of the metal was 



130 Union Labor in Peace and War 

urgently needed, to paralyze the lumber industry in three states 
and to spread terror in a hundred farming communities. 

It is possible that German money has been used liberally to 
bring about the present activities of the organization, but it 
would be an imitation of the ostrich to attribute the full scope 
of I. W. W. actions to this source. The real I. W. W. does not 
mind being called a traitor or a slacker; he merely grins and 
acknowledges cheerfully his total lack of patriotism. He main- 
tains that governments of all kinds, that wars of all kinds, are 
conducted solely for the benefit of the capitalists, and that he, a 
mere slave, has no interest in them except to make use of the 
most favorable opportunity, when the masters have fallen out, to 
grab for himself, for his fellow "slaves" in mill, mine, forest and 
field, all that he can possibly extract out of the necessities of the 
dominant class. This theory, this mode of action, is well ex- 
emplified in present events. 

Some years ago many charges of dynamite — and of corruption 
— caused to blow into a thousand pieces one of the oldest and 
strongest of the Far Western labor unions, the Butte local of the 
Western Federation of Miners, an organization that had domi- 
nated the industrial and political situation of the famous camp for 
decades. The I. W. W. element supplied the dynamite, the fuse 
and applied the match. Following the demise of the Western 
Federation of Miners, Sam Gompers endeavored to gather the 
remnant of the organization into the International Union of 
Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, chartered by the American 
Federation of Labor, but the Gompers organization did not stand 
the test. When the I. W. W. element on the spur of the moment 
organized a new union and called the miners out on strike, the 
Gompers organization cheered and marched bodily into the camp 
of the forces commanded by Wm. D. Haywood, generalissimo 
of the I. W. W. Similar desertions took place in Bisbee, Globe, 
Miami and Clifton, Arizona; in Jerome a strike of the copper 
miners had just been settled to the satisfaction, apparently, of 
the men when the I. W. W. leaders called upon the miners to 
strike in sympathy with their Bisbee fellow- workers. They 
struck, settlements and agreements notwithstanding. In Butte 
the blacksmiths, the machinists and other crafts twiddled their 
thumbs at Gompers and, disregarding their signed agreements, 
walked out on sympathetic strikes. Everywhere the I. W. W. 
demonstrated that they had the power to set at naught the ideal 
of patriotic duty and to guide the actions of the workers along 
the lines of crass and open self-interest. 

Of course they enjoyed a perfect combination of circumstances. 
An actual labor shortage existed in every line of endeavor. Em- 
ployers were more or less competing with one another. Tales 



The Problem of the I. W. W. 131 

of fabulous profits, many of them true, were constantly recited, 
the workers' envy was aroused by constant comparison of their 
earnings with the profits of the capitalist. The high cost of living 
was exploited for all it was worth and more. No argument was 
left unpolished by nimble-tongued advocates of the Social 
Revolution, who, however, were careful to subordinate their 
ultimate aims to the necessities of the moment. It seems that the 
word went out from headquarters to lay off the rough blood-and- 
thunder stuff, to tone down the revolutionary arguments to play 
on the men's cupidity in order to arouse them to action. And 
the plan worked, is still working, just as it worked in Australia 
where the coal miners remained sullenly on strike even though 
the wheat ships and transports carrying supplies to the heroic 
fighters in Asia Minor and in France had to lie tied up at 
the docks. The sullen envy artfully aroused by a handful 
of skilled agitators sufficed to overpower the voice of duty and 
patriotism. 

I have no ready-made solution for the problem presented by 
the growing power of the Industrial Workers of the World, but 
I do not believe, looking back into history, that machine guns 
and gibbets are an effective remedy. It has been tried too often 
to promise lasting results. Rather I am inclined to look for a 
partial solution of the problem in the conditions as they exist in 
San Francisco and environs. 

Of the San Francisco field the secretary of the I. W. W. speaks 
with bitter contempt. He can't make any headway. They won't 
listen to him. They won't enthuse at all, at all over the idea of 
the One Big Union. The little red membership card, proudly 
designated their Liberty Bond by the I. W. W., finds few takers 
even though a night school has been established to drill the doc- 
trine of the Grand Bust-up into obtuse heads. 

The reason for the San Francisco workers' total lack of interest 
in the gospel of the I. W. W. is not far to seek. Through a judi- 
cious combination of economic, political and direct action, 
through the liberal attitude of the San Francisco employers, the 
trade unions gyrating around the Golden Gate have been able to 
obtain higher wages and shorter hours than those normally 
prevailing anywhere else on the Pacific Coast, and the coast as a 
whole pays the highest average wages in the world. In addition 
to most favorable wages and hours, the San Francisco unions 
have for years exerted the strongest pull on the reins that guide 
the steed of municipal administration. In other words, the unions 
have had their own sweet way in San Francisco, and they do not 
propose to share even the core of the apple with outside inter- 
lopers, be they Socialists or Industrial Workers. They are per- 
fectly content to let well enough severely alone, and they resent — 



132 Union Labor in Peace and War 

with initiation fees of a hundred dollars, if necessary — the at- 
tempt of any outside hoof to get into the trough. 

Vermin and the I. W. W. agitator do not survive on a clean, 
healthy body. In drawing this parallel I am not disparaging the 
fanatical adherent of the Big Bang; I merely wish to emphasize 
the fact that the multiplication of either indicates the presence 
of an unhealthy, unclean, diseased spot. Wherever men are well 
paid, work reasonable hours and are reasonably content, the 
I. W. W. propaganda can make small headway, but it takes root 
and blossoms almost overnight where working conditions are 
bad, hours long and wages low. The bloody riot among the 
Wheatland, California, hop pickers several years ago would not 
have happened if bad sanitary and working conditions had not 
created a smoldering resentment which could be fanned into red 
flame by the overjoyed agitators, nor would it have been possible 
to tie up a good two-thirds of the Far Western copper industry 
if the discontent of the well-paid miners had not been artfully 
aroused by the incessant reference to the millions flowing into 
the pockets of the stockholders. 

Contrary perhaps to current opinion, I believe that the In- 
dustrial Workers of the World have in the past rendered the 
country great and useful services. Their strident yelps have 
succeeded in focussing public attention upon the deplorable con- 
dition of the itinerant worker. The marked improvement in the 
conditions surrounding the casual laborer employed in the con- 
struction camps, on the railroads, in the forests and mines of the 
Far West, an improvement noticed almost everywhere by the 
sociological student, is in large part traceable to the persistent 
agitation of this organization of raucous-voiced professional 
rebels. The trade unions lived alongside of the old conditions 
for many decades without casting more than a casual glance at 
the hoboes and blanket-stiffs. The trade unions did not care so 
long as their own nest was warm and soft. It remained for the 
I. W. W. to reach down and lighten the despised bohunk's 
burden. 

But this service was not rendered willingly. Your dyed-in-the- 
wool I. W. W. has neither wings and a halo nor does he play the 
harp. With him any improvement in the present condition of 
the workers is an unwelcome by-product because it delays and 
retards the advent of his dream child, the Social Revolution. He 
hates the present order of things with every fiber of his warped 
being, but he cannot overthrow it unless he convert the mass of 
the workers to his cause, and he cannot convert them unless he 
proves to them the efficiency of the One Big Union by winning 
better conditions for them right now. And every time he wins 
better conditions for them now, every time he induces enlightened 



The Problem of the I. W. W. 133 

public sentiment to clean up diseased spots on the industrial 
body, his own efforts push the attainment of his ultimate goal 
farther and farther into the future. 

So he becomes bitter, filled with a sullen, venomous rage. 
Dimly realizing the futility of his efforts, so far as the Universal 
Crash is concerned, he begins to love trouble for trouble's sake. 
In the sub-basement of the industrial structure he burrows and 
mines and digs and scratches for the sheer joy of destruction. 
Physically or mentally he is no longer able to do an honest day's 
work for fair pay: he is useless for any purpose except to wield 
the bellows that blow oxygen into the glowing embers of dis- 
content. 

There are thousands of men of this type, most of them native 
born or from northern Europe, drifting restlessly back and forth 
across the country, their roving eyes seeking for places in which 
to stir up trouble. When circumstances are favorable they 
become the leaders of vast armies, only to see their ranks melt 
away again when conditions change, for the bulk of American 
labor is as yet unaffected by the I. W. W. poison. And the 
safest, surest remedy against infection is a concerted attempt at 
real social legislation, a nation-wide, sincere and sustained effort 
to reduce unemployment, to improve conditions for the lowest 
stratum of America's labor. If fresh air and sunlight is allowed 
to pour into the corners of the nation's industrial cellar, the 
I. W. W. fungus will disappear. 

But such a national effort is slow and cumbersome, takes years 
and many millions. In the meantime the emergency caused by a 
few thousand professional I. W. W. agitators is upon us. What 
is to be done about it? 

Self-defense is a natural law. The I. W. W. agitators are 
avowedly carrying on a continuous war against organized society. 
Under present circumstances the government would be justified 
in putting out a dragnet, in gathering five or ten thousand of the 
most active agitators and in interning them for the duration of 
the war. Such a measure tried successfully in Aberdeen, in 
San Diego, in Jerome, Arizona, would put a sudden end to most 
of the trouble during the great international crisis, but it will 
be only temporary. A permanent solution can be found only in a 
quickening and broadening of the efforts of all agencies engaged 
in the great work of cleaning out the foul corners of the nation's 
basement. 



CHAPTER XIV 
THE SQUARE DEAL PAYS 

The mill was in a bad way. It could sell only a fraction of its 
output. The Pacific Coast, then still in long dresses, could not 
absorb all of the new mill's product, and competition with the 
Eastern mills in their home territory was impossible. Times were 
hard in the middle nineties and the stockholders of the new mill 
in the new town grew exceedingly weary of the everlasting assess- 
ments. They did not like the balance sheets. Each month 
showed an increase in the floating indebtedness and an increase 
in the deficit. They debated whether it would not be cheaper to 
shut down the plant entirely. 

This debate worried Jim Horning. His bread and butter 
depended upon the decision. If the plant shut down, it did not 
need a bookkeeper, and even a first-class accountant had little 
chance of finding a new position during the black years when 
two-thirds of the country's railroads found themselves in the 
hands of a receiver. Jim Horning knew what it meant to be out 
of work. The bookkeeping position was his second job in 
America; before that he had kept the accounts in a Seattle hotel — 
for his room and board. But things were different now. He had 
a family to support. So he burned the midnight oil, entirely sur- 
rounded by sheets of white paper and rows of short, finely 
sharpened pencils. 

He was working out a most audacious plan. Many a night he 
figured, checked and rechecked his estimates; many an hour he 
discussed the plan with his good wife. At last he was ready. 

The plan made the directors gasp. James Horning, the quiet 
bookkeeper, proposed to take the plant off their hands and oper- 
ate it on his own hook. All he wanted was time, an option on 
the stock and a modest salary. In return he promised to pay the 
entire floating indebtedness running into six figures, to pay off 
the entire bond issue and to pay for the stock out of the earnings 
of a plant that had returned nothing but Irish dividends. And 
he proposed to accomplish all this without asking the stockholders 
to put up another cent! 

They laughed at first, but when they saw that the bookkeeper 
meant business, they considered the proposition seriously. 
And they accepted it. Why not? Things could not be worse. 
A miracle might happen. So Horning took over the white ele- 
phant and became general manager. That was more than twenty 
years ago. 



The Square Deal Pays 135 

He did it. He paid the huge floating indebtedness, every penny 
of it. He retired the bond issue. He bought the bulk of the 
stock, all out of the earnings of the mill. Nowadays he spends a 
great deal of time improving his stroke with the niblick, and an 
automobile no longer is anything to him except the speediest 
and most confortable mode of conveyance. 

How did he do it? How did the modest bookkeeper owning 
nothing except the small savings from his monthly pay check 
manage to obtain possession of a big plant employing hundreds of 
men? 

Ability, foresight, hard work, enterprise and the export market 
were some of the rungs of the ladder up which Horning climbed 
to success, but the foundation upon which the ladder rested was 
just plain honesty, the intense desire to give everyone of his cus- 
tomers a square deal. The square deal became the corner-stone 
of Homing's business policy. Through it he obtained not only 
the friendship and good will of the trade, but he also applied it to 
the solution of that knottiest of all questions confronting the 
manufacturer, the labor problem. 

From the beginning he made it a point to establish personal 
relations with as many of his employees as he could reach. To 
him the men working in the mill were not "hands," but human 
beings with prejudices, likes, dislikes, feelings and ambitions even 
as you and I. Realizing the importance of team work in pro- 
duction, he set out to gain the men's confidence and trust. It was 
a slow, laborious process, but the result was full worth the effort. 

To begin with, Horning determined that low wages and dis- 
content meant low output. Therefore he deliberately began 
paying the highest wages in the industry. He went farther. 
When living costs and profits increased, he did not wait for a com- 
mittee to appear with shaking knees and a bold front, demanding 
a raise of twice the size the men hoped to get. Before demands 
were formulated, before discontent had crept through the mill 
gate, he voluntarily gave the pay of the workers a lift. And when 
things did not turn out right, when the market sagged and 
economy became necessary, he waited until his competitors had 
reduced wages before taking the same step. Always he was the 
first to raise and the last to cut his men's earnings. 

Nor did he stop there. Like every similar mill in the country, 
the plant was running two shifts of twelve hours. He was the 
first to change, to introduce three shifts of eight hours, at the 
same time reducing the hours of common outside labor from ten 
to nine. And he paid his men the same wages for eight hours 
that he had been paying for twelve. 

On top of paying the highest wages and the shortest hours 
Horning took a personal interest in the affairs of his men. He 



136 Union Labor in Peace and War 

advanced them money at nominal interest to build homes; he 
helped them in case of sickness; he encouraged social activities. 
And, realizing that the average man resents being bossed around, 
he consulted the workers whenever the working conditions were 
changed. 

And on top of the highest wages, the shortest hours, he pro- 
ceeded to pay his men a bonus on increased production. It was 
not the kind of bonus based on stop-watch records. Wages were 
not reduced, the daily stint was not lifted before the bonus was 
paid. Taking an average year's output as the basis, Horning 
offered a monthly premium for increased production to the skilled 
mechanics running the machines, without disturbing the estab- 
lished scale of wages. 

A year later Horning overheard a conversation that proved to 
be worth many thousands of dollars to him. Standing in the 
black shadow of a vat he heard one repair man call to another, 
"Hey, Bill, what's your hurry?" 

"Got a call from number one. Something wrong. They're 
yelling for me to come and fix it," replied Bill. 

"Let 'em yell," urged the other one contemptuously. "What'n 
hell do you care? You ain't gettin' a bonus. Let them bonus 
guys wait till you're good and ready." 

Bill. He stopped and leisurely lighted a pipe before he re- 
sumed his march to the machine room. In the shadow of the vat 
Horning was thinking hard. 

As a result of his cogitation the bonus system was extended to 
the repair men. The moment they acquired a pecuniary interest 
in the output of the machines, they speeded up. There was no 
more stalling. On the contrary, they were so anxious to keep the 
machines running full speed that they were on the spot almost 
before the trouble happened. But Horning did not stop with the 
repair men. He enlarged the scope of the premium until every 
employee except outside day labor had a share in the bonus over 
and above the highest wages in the industry. 

What was the result of Homing's labor policy? 

Honestly, the results sounds like a fairy tale. If they were 
not fully authenticated by elaborate detailed tables I would hesi- 
tate to write them down. 

When the plant was built more than twenty-five years ago its 
rated capacity was, say, 150 gross per day, but it did not reach 
this output until Horning had been carrying out his labor policy 
for more than a year. He has not increased the machine capacity 
since then; though increased and improved auxiliary machinery 
has been installed from time to time, the important part of the 
equipment is just as it was twenty years ago. Visiting manu- 
facturers owning up-to-the-minute plants with ten or twenty 



The Square Deal Pays 137 

times the capacity are inclined to sniff at the "obsolete junk" 
and pity Horning — until they hear of the daily output and get an 
inkling of the costs per gross. When fragments of this informa- 
tion get under their skin, their noses come down and their hats 
come off. 

As stated above, the plant was rated originally as having a capac- 
ity of 150 gross per day. The partial bonus system was intro- 
duced in 1 90 1. In 1903 the output rose to 165 gross in twenty- 
four hours. In 1906 it had climbed to 196 gross. In 1908 the 
bonus system was extended to every employee except outside 
labor. In 1909 the output had increased from the original 150 
to 210 gross; a year later it was 225 gross; in 1913 it reached 264 
gross. In 1916 the ancient machinery, rated to produce 150, was 
actually turning out 370 gross a day. 

Team work did it. Since the size of the bonus depended upon 
the output, since the output of this particular product depended 
upon the smooth, uninterrupted working of every department 
from the raw material to the finished article, the men in every 
department saw to it that the slackers, the loafers, the "go-slow 
boys," the misfits and the drones were eliminated speedily. 
The men themselves, not the boss, insisted upon efficiency in 
their fellow-workers. The men themselves saw to it that every cog 
in the big production machine did its duty. The men themselves 
kept their eyes open for leaks, for chances to improve the process, 
to save time. In ten years the time lost on the principal machines 
— they did not improve with increasing age — was cut down by 
fifty per cent. And after the voluntary change from the twelve- 
hour to the eight-hour shift, when the bonus money was cut 
into three instead of two parts, the men doubled their watch- 
fulness, put forth such intelligent, enthusiastic efforts that both 
production and bonus rose to figures considered miraculous. 

Though Homing's payroll has increased in size from year to 
year, though the individual employee's earnings have gone up 
and up, the output of the plant has increased even faster. Horn- 
ing proved the efficacy of his labor policy. Both the boss and 
the men are eminently satisfied because both profited through the 
enlightened policy. A policy that can lift the earnings of labor 
from #3.25 for twelve hours in 1901 to #6.93 for eight hours in 
1916, which can at the same time more than double the output 
and reduce the cost of this output twenty-four per cent per 
unit, such a policy surely is worth the close attention of every 
employer and every worker. 

The strike had been long, bitter and bloody, so bloody that I 
visited the battlefield to investigate the causes of the strife in 
person. The president of the State Federation of Labor led the 



138 Union Labor in Peace and War 

strikers. With him I discussed the feud for hours. By-and-by 
the talk drifted to Homing's mill. 

"Why is it that Homing's plant, located in a community as 
thoroughly organized as any city on the Pacific Coast, is not 
unionized from top to bottom?" I asked. 

"Because they don't need a union in Homing's mill," answered 
the strike leader emphatically. "It wouldn't help them a bit. 
They don't need a union because they're getting a square deal all 
around." 

Yea, verily, the first rosy flush of dawn is breaking on the dark 
horizon of the Labor Problem. Up and down the Pacific Coast 
employers are giving this problem more intelligent consideration, 
are studying it from all angles more intensely than ever before. 
They are learning fast, learning that human understanding of 
the laborer and the square deal constitute the only sensible, 
reasonable and profitable policy. 

Only a few weeks ago I was discussing the labor problem with 
E. G. Judah, president of the Los Angeles Merchants' & Manu- 
facturers' Association, the organization that has led the Los 
Angeles fight against labor unions for twenty years, the mention 
of whose name causes the back hair of the average union leader to 
rise and bristle. 

"To keep Los Angeles free from union domination we must pay 
the same wages and work the same hours as the closed shops 
farther north," asserted Mr. Judah. "Most of our members are 
following this policy right now. This organization cannot afford 
and will not protect the employer who exploits his labor. Only 
by P a yi n § the highest possible wages and giving the best possible 
working conditions can we hope to maintain the open shop. The 
employer who is able and yet fails to raise wages to conform with 
the rising cost of living is playing directly into the hands of the 
union organizer. So far as this organization is concerned, he 
will receive neither sympathy nor support." 

In San Francisco the leaders among the employers long ago 
discarded the exploded theory that long hours and low wages 
increase profits. An example of the attitude taken by the leaders 
in social thought was supplied when the teamsters' union some 
time ago demanded increased wages, basing its demand on the 
rising cost of living. The draymen's association denied the re- 
quest that stationary rates and higher cost of all materials made 
it impossible further to increase expenses, whereupon the union 
prepared to strike. 

In this emergency a committee of the draymen's association 
turned to the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce for sympathy 
and active assistance, knowing that this organization had taken 
a strong and determined stand against violence and lawlessness 



The Square Deal Pays 139 

in labor disputes. A conference with the Law and Order Com- 
mittee of the civic body was arranged. After a thorough dis- 
cussion of the situation President F. J. Koster asked: 

"You say you have to pay a great deal more than formerly 
for horses, hay, grain and other supplies ?" 

"Twice as much," answered the draymen. 

"And your harness, your wagons, your axle grease, everything 
costs more?" 

The draymen nodded an emphatic assent. 

"Are you feeding your horses less grain because grain costs 
more ?" 

Why, of course not! The animals had to be kept in good con- 
dition. 

President Koster was silent for a moment. 

"Then human labor is the only commodity for which you feel 
that you cannot pay an increased price," he continued. "Con- 
sider the problem from that standpoint, gentlemen. If it costs 
you more to keep your horses, it surely costs your teamsters more 
to feed and clothe themselves and their families. If you cannot 
do otherwise, raise your rates a reasonable amount and grant the 
demands of your men. They are entitled to it and this organiza- 
tion will support you if you are faced by the necessity of charging 
more for your services." 

The teamsters did not strike. They received the increase. 

These are not isolated instances. Throughout the Far West 
open-minded employers have realized that the square deal is a 
most profitable policy, that the best possible wages and the 
shortest possible hours make for greater efficiency and lower 
labor cost per unit. If these open-minded, far-sighted employers 
had full sway, eighty per cent of the bitterness, the hatred and 
suspicion could be eliminated from the relations between capital 
and labor. But as yet neither labor nor capital is one hundred 
per cent perfect. The efforts of the thoughtful employer who is 
imbued with the spirit of the square deal are hampered and offset 
in every direction by the black sheep among his own class, men 
who have no conception of the problem facing the world, who 
still believe that human labor is a commodity like pig iron or sole 
leather, to be bought as cheaply and used up as cheaply as 
possible. Sometimes their exploitation is based on deliberate 
greed and ignorance; more often ruthless competition, lack of 
sufficient capital, inexperience and poor management force them 
to cut wages to the quick, but whatever the underlying cause, 
employers of this stamp do the cause of the square deal incalcul- 
able harm. They keep the unscrupulous labor leader and radical 
agitator supplied with ammunition. 



140 Union Labor in Peace and War 

Fortunately the slave-driving, sweatshop type of employer 
has never infested the Pacific Coast in large numbers; the sins 
committed by capital against labor have usually been the prod- 
uct of ignorance, of inefficiency or unsound financing and man- 
agement. Even this class of offenders is very, very small today. 
When the laborers ceased to compete for the job and employers 
began to compete for labor, the general level of wages for skilled 
and unskilled men in every important industry rose to unheard of 
heights. If Simon Legree were to come out of his grave and 
assume charge of a factory, even he would have to pay high 
wages, work his men short hours and grant them the best possible 
conditions. Circumstances have given the workers, especially 
the skilled men, far higher compensation than the union leaders 
had ever expected or promised to obtain. 

Wouldn't it seem to you, Friend Reader, that the union men 
and union leaders would make use of this marvelous opportunity 
to fortify their position? They are having everything their own 
way now. For the time being they are the cock of the walk, the 
ruler of the roost. But it won't be always thus. The inevitable 
readjustment after peace is declared will restore the old con- 
ditions. Doesn't it seem reasonable to suppose that union 
leaders and union men with real ability and constructive thought 
would make use of the opportunity to prove to the employer that 
he can make more money by running his plant as a union than 
as a non-union shop? 

How can the union men supply this proof? 

By turning out more work of a higher grade than non-union 
men. Every union claims that in its ranks may be found the 
cream of the country's mechanics superior in every respect to 
the non-members. Now is the time to back up this claim with 
evidence, to prove that it pays to give union men the preference. 

Willingly or unwillingly, the employers of the Pacific Coast are 
now living up to the policy of the square deal. Are the unions 
in return doing their bit? Are they imbued with the spirit of the 
square deal? 

Petroleum is short. In California production is a million 
barrels a month behind consumption. Destroyers, battleships, 
airplanes, army trucks are calling for ever more oil. A few weeks 
ago the federal mediator recommended the eight-hour day for 
the oil-field workers. Late in December two drilling crews, on 
night shift, were discovered tight asleep two hours after they had 
reported for duty. A third crew, all on the same lease, was playing 
pinochle instead of drilling wells. The men were receiving six to 
eight dollars a day; even the roustabouts were earning four dollars. 

Go out among the managers, the superintendents and shop 
owners of the Pacific Coast. Ask them. They will tell you that 



The Square Deal Pays 141 

production, the extraordinary wages notwithstanding, is below 
normal. They will tell you that restriction of output is being 
practiced tacitly; they will prove that the multiplicity of galling, 
arbitrary union rules, designed to keep as many union men as 
possible employed for the longest possible time on any given 
piece of work, are being enforced rigidly, war or no war. 

Does this policy pay in the long run ? 

A few of the national labor leaders are realizing the full extent 
of the possibilities inherent in the present abnormal situation. 
They are striving with might and main to bring about the burial 
of the tomahawk between the unions and the employers. In 
this national emergency they want the unions to make good. 

But the labor leaders of the Pacific Coast, especially in the 
metal trades, are blind, deaf and dumb. Their mental vision is 
limited to the fact that they have the employers where they want 
them, sans culottes, and they are going to do to them what the 
Kaiser did to Belgium. 

Will they ever realize, as Horning did, as the mass of the em- 
ployers is beginning to appreciate, that the square deal is the 
only policy that will yield permanent dividends for both sides? 



